Session 8 · Week 4 · Thu 26 Nov 2026 · 75 min

Design Review Presentations.

Present a design, defend the decisions, and give and take review feedback like a staff engineer.

Ehsan Gazar
From Senior to Staff · session 8 of 8
Where we're going · 90 minutes

The run sheet.

0–10How reviews are scoredwhat reviewers listen for
10–20The presentation shapeframe, decisions, risks
20–70Presentations + feedbackyou present, we review
70–85Defending wellpushback without defensiveness
85–90Wrap & what's nextcarrying the loop forward
By the end of tonight

You'll be able to…

1Present a design crisply: frame → decisions → risks.
2Defend decisions without getting defensive.
3Give and receive review feedback that improves the design.
4Read the room and adjust depth on the fly.
The reframe

A review is graded on the reasoning, not the slides.

Reviewers aren't scoring your diagram. They're scoring whether your decisions hold up when questioned. Present the trade-offs you made and why, invite the hard questions, and treat feedback as free design work.

💡 In plain English

Show your work and explain your choices, like defending a project to a friendly panel. Tough questions aren't an attack, they're free help finding the weak spot before it bites you in production.

Lead with decisions
not a tour of every box
structure
Name the risks first
owning them disarms the room
move
Feedback is free work
the room is debugging your design
mindset
The toolkit

What to have in your head.

1
Frame
remind them of the problem and the non-goals
2
Decisions
the few trade-offs that matter, with "because"
3
Risks
what you're unsure of, named before they ask
4
Defending
answer the axis, not the ego
5
Feedback norms
specific, kind, about the design not the person
6
Reading the room
go deeper or move on based on the questions
Recap · then what's next

Present decisions. Defend reasoning. Take the notes.

Lead with the framing, present the trade-offs that matter, surface your own risks, and defend by naming the axis. Six weeks in, the loop is now how you think, not a checklist.

→
Project 6 · Design Review Presentation
This is the capstone. You present today.
the finish line
After the course
Run the loop on your next real RFC. That's how the level sticks.
keep going