Why System Design is so critical with AI and how to learn it | Night School with Byron Mackay

AI can write the code. It can't decide what to build, how to scale it, or where it will break. Apply to Gauntlet: https://apply.gauntletai.com/register... Access the lesson breakdown here: https://www.gauntletai.com/night-scho... Night School: free live AI engineering classes every Wednesday, 5 PM CT https://gauntletai.com/night-school?u... In this Night School session, Byron Mackay (Director of Learning at Gauntlet AI) breaks down why system design has become the single most valuable skill for engineers working with AI — and the one most being filtered for in interviews right now. Byron walks through what's actually showing up in the data: AI-authored PRs ship 1.7x more issues and nearly 3x more security vulnerabilities than human-authored ones, exploit windows have collapsed from two years to under two months, and companies are responding by hiring deeper for engineers who can reason about architecture, not just produce features. What you'll learn: Why "I can build it fast" isn't a hireable skill anymore The four questions every system has to answer: how it behaves, scales, fails, and evolves What invisible context and comprehension debt look like in AI-generated codebases Real interview questions companies are asking (Postgres vs. Mongo, sharding, schema design) A step-by-step workflow for using Claude as a system design tutor — with quizzes, case studies, and spaced repetition Recommended reading: System Design Interview Vol. 1 & 2, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, Understanding Distributed Systems Whether you're prepping for interviews or building something you actually want to trust in production, this is the foundation.