bradser

My first reaction to this was, "neat coding question for interviews". I started to try to solve it for a few seconds, then thought of when I've asked coding questions. Invariably starting by saying "The goal is to see how you approach and work through the problem, and less so whether you come up with the optimal solution". Then I thought, what if the interviewer and interviewee tackled the problem together, both coming in cold? And that was stated as such, up front? It would be much closer to the real world of tacking novel problems as a team. Taking the pressure of "I need to come up with the answer" off the interviewee should result in real focus on "working through the problem", and decrease interviewee stress; if the interviewer doesn't know the answer yet, how can they expect the interviewee to come up with one?

There are a couple of obvious downsides like: What if it turns out the problem is too trivial? Move on to the next one. What if the interviewee has already encountered the problem before? No different than if the interviewer posed an already-solved problem.

It would be incumbent upon the interviewer to not reveal a solution if they come up with it first of course. And the evaluation of "how you approach and work through the problem" is less definite than whether an answer (brute-force or optimal) was achieved; but if approach is indeed the important thing, that needs to be evaluated regardless. I'm sure there are other downsides I'm not seeing off the top of my head.

I can't be the first person to come up with this strategy, nor try it in real interviews. Has anybody attempted this? Was it successful or not, and why?

I can't tell if this strategy that just popped into my head is of value :-).

For me, general low energy and brain fog for years was low thyroid level. Your level could have been declining for a while unrelatedly, but at the same time, as your trauma. In addition to level, after diagnosis and initial mitigation via artificial thyroid replacement medication, I had to switch to natural thyroid replacement. Finally, had to adjust diet too; finally back to a generally decent state. Get checked and rule this out!

If anyone has been on synthroid and it stops working for you, check with your doctor about switching to natural desiccated thyroid, made a big difference for me. Also see if avoiding goitrogenic foods works for you (like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruciferous_vegetables); keeping a food diary for a few months proved to me how impactful they are for me, YMMV.

A friend of mine founded a financial education startup focusing on participatory budgeting for schools and families, might be a fun thing to try out: https://firstroot.co/solutions/families/.