Estimation question
Estimate the memory needed for Nest cameras for the fiscal year 2020.
- Estimation
- Medium
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What this question tests
Tests structured estimation of cloud storage requirements using device count, recording behavior, and video compression assumptions.
How to approach it
- State the goal: estimate the total cloud storage needed to support Nest camera video for fiscal year 2020.
- Estimate active Nest camera installations: assume roughly 10 million active Nest cameras in use globally during that period.
- Estimate recording behavior: assume each camera records an average of 4 hours of motion-triggered footage per day, since most plans use event-based, not continuous, recording.
- Estimate storage per hour of video: assume compressed video at roughly 1 GB per hour at typical Nest streaming resolution.
- Compute daily storage: 10 million cameras times 4 hours times 1 GB, about 40 petabytes of new footage generated per day.
- Adjust for a typical 30-day rolling retention window, giving roughly 1.2 exabytes of stored footage at any time, then sanity-check against known cloud storage scale for comparable services.
What a strong answer includes
- Builds the estimate from concrete device, usage, and compression assumptions rather than guessing a storage figure directly.
- Correctly assumes event-triggered recording rather than continuous 24/7 footage, reflecting how Nest's actual product works.
- Incorporates a retention window explicitly, recognizing total storage depends on how long footage is kept, not just daily generation.
- Sanity-checks the final exabyte-scale figure against known cloud storage scales for comparable consumer video services.
Common mistakes
- Assuming continuous 24/7 recording for every camera, drastically overestimating storage needs versus Nest's actual event-based model.
- Computing only daily generation without applying a retention window, missing the actual total storage requirement.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would this estimate change for users on a continuous-recording plan versus the standard event-based plan?
- How would video compression improvements over time affect this estimate?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop