Kaizeras

Cats (and perhaps other mammals/animals with complex nervous systems) have the tendency to „disappear“ a few days before they die.

I lived in the countryside as a kid and saw several generations of our farm cats come & go. We never found out where and when they died, but all of them lived a long (cat) life and I‘m pretty sure most of them died of old age.

My assumption is that humans can feel that their time is coming as well, and apparently the experience seems to be similar for all of us.

An ex-colleague of mine worked for OneCoin (another crypto scam originating from Bulgaria) when their offices got raided a few years ago. Now he’s an engineering manager at Nexo.

I can see a pattern emerging in his career.

This brings memories. I also got „asked to leave“ after raising our first round.

I was young (25) and naive, with no experience in business within the family. But what was really crucial back then was that I lacked a mentor who’d make me aware of the risks before letting the sharks in.

It took me three years to bounce back and start something new. On the positive side, I learned a lot.

Author here - Given that I‘m not in the US puts me at a disadvantage. But if you can forward me a good lawyer who is willing to work with me on this, I may give it a shot.

IMO getting better at Leetcode problems is similar to getting better at mathematics and physics - you become familiar on a topic by doing problems on a daily basis, trying to wrap your mind around the concepts and at times doing a bit of drilling just to stamp the things that need to be memorized.

Both require you to be disciplined and dedicate time on a daily basis, otherwise you won’t get further.

Having the time to address this is absolute luxury to me. Only when I became relatively rich (I‘m coming from a poor background) could I consider learning Leetcode problems. Before that point, I was learning whatever earns me survival money.

I had a similar life and I fully concur to your sentiment - it took me the better part of my life to get out of poverty, and I missed out on so many things that normal people regard as a given.

These days I‘m studying physics and mathematics while having a cushy engineering job and I‘m so genuinely happy that I can sit down and study for hours without having to worry about making ends meet at the end of the month. It’s a blessing.

Most of the people I know who did competitive programming in high school spent a just a few evenings preparing for FAANG interviews and still got offers in the end.

I have the feeling that all the bitterness towards this interview process comes from people who refuse to do the initial investment of time to learn the foundation for solving coding challenges. Once you go through and understand a few hundred coding challenges, things start to repeat themselves and then it just takes practice and consistency.

Personally, I find coding challenges fun and even quite enjoyable at times, so I don’t see why it’s a waste of time to get good at them. At the very least, I learned a lot about Java doing them than I would‘ve learned if I did a side project where I‘d need to use some framework or library that’s based on Java.

Edit: grammar

Весела Коледа!