dustin

Totally agree on the life hacks. In fact, consider them essential, not optional.

It can be hard to overcome the inertia if you haven't exercised in a while, but it's ALWAYS worth the time.

Get enough sleep. This should be #1 really - it's more important than exercise, but exercising helps you sleep. Find a way to get 8 hours a day for the foreseeable future and make it a priority. There are lots of ways to deal with insomnia, feel free to email me (see profile).

Eat right - good food, fruit & vegetables, nuts, the usual. Don't overeat, go hungry, or stuff yourself on junk food & stimulants.

Finally, make regular plans to do social/physical activities and commit to having the REST OF THE DAY off, whether it's on a weekend or a weekday evening. Your worries (and gadgets, emails, etc) should be shut off and locked away until you wake up the next morning.

That phrase struck me too, and I couldn't agree more with the geographical tradeoffs that usually hold true.

I guess quitting the 9-5 to work on startups might qualify - there's always sacrifices though :)

Well, almost: http://bit.ly/bcaonj

I also found the clock annoying. If someone does this for an interview they're likely to feel enough pressure anyways. I'd let the test taker hide it and maybe redisplay it automatically with 5 minutes to go.

As for comfy conditions on the job - I would hope that default conditions are comfy. When interviewing I'm more interested in how people will perform day-to-day rather than in rare situations. Most programming jobs don't really require employees to be "cool under pressure."

Other than that, good job on the execution so far. Reminds me a lot of TopCoder, just applied to a specific niche in a good way. I would even consider using this or recommending it to colleagues for hiring.