I had a "reverse" system design interview at Amazon back in the 2000s. Possibly before the modern "forward" system design interview became so popular.
I also remember circa 2012-2014 being required to conduct what are now considered typical modern system design interviews (i.e. as an interviewer) while employed at Amazon, and 90% of (even senior) candidates had no idea how to even begin to approach the "design a system to do X"-type questions. I think this is partly because far fewer people in typical software jobs were building distributed systems back then anyway, and partly because all the YouTube videos and guides like yours didn't exist yet, so nobody was doing the kind of dedicated prep and rote-learning that seems increasingly expected nowadays.
Back then, when the problem was too far from the candidate's real work experience, and they weren't willing to make educated guesses and ask clarifying questions in order to move forward, it was often a struggle (for both of us) to pivot the interview towards something the candidate could tackle and demonstrate their design experience. ("Tell me about a system you designed", i.e. the "reverse" approach, wasn't an acceptable alternative in our rubric.)
Now, just like what happened with coding interviews vs. Leetcode, it seems that a more common challenge for the interviewer is telling the difference between a candidate who is applying real experience and understanding vs. regurgitating/performing what they read in a system design interview prep guide. But that's assuming one is actually more valuable than the other, and I don't have proof of that.
I also remember circa 2012-2014 being required to conduct what are now considered typical modern system design interviews (i.e. as an interviewer) while employed at Amazon, and 90% of (even senior) candidates had no idea how to even begin to approach the "design a system to do X"-type questions. I think this is partly because far fewer people in typical software jobs were building distributed systems back then anyway, and partly because all the YouTube videos and guides like yours didn't exist yet, so nobody was doing the kind of dedicated prep and rote-learning that seems increasingly expected nowadays.
Back then, when the problem was too far from the candidate's real work experience, and they weren't willing to make educated guesses and ask clarifying questions in order to move forward, it was often a struggle (for both of us) to pivot the interview towards something the candidate could tackle and demonstrate their design experience. ("Tell me about a system you designed", i.e. the "reverse" approach, wasn't an acceptable alternative in our rubric.)
Now, just like what happened with coding interviews vs. Leetcode, it seems that a more common challenge for the interviewer is telling the difference between a candidate who is applying real experience and understanding vs. regurgitating/performing what they read in a system design interview prep guide. But that's assuming one is actually more valuable than the other, and I don't have proof of that.