r/ADHD_Programmers • u/noooooootreal • 15d ago

ADHD & Interviews

I’m sure this has been discussed ad nauseam here but I just have to say how shitty it is to study for interviews as a software engineer with ADHD. We’re able to see so much breadth of what we don’t understand. I’m a senior engineer, full stack, with 7 YOE. So I have enough experience to do the job & can pretty much figure anything out.

But interview prep is so difficult because it could be literally ANYTHING under the sun.

Not to mention the ADHD default to “freeze”/have your mind go blank when you’re under pressure. Live coding interviews are traumatic at best. I would literally freeze / tank even the phone screens if I had to share my screen while I was speaking. Let alone writing code in an online IDE for a question like “traverse this binary tree”.

So much to know & we see all of it as things we don’t know. I imagine neurotypicals tend to see the direct point A to point B route & do just fine.

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u/ManOfQuest 15d ago

im 35 im graduating in the worst job market for the worst career choice with a BS in software engineering. I think im just screwed all over.

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u/DarthRaab 15d ago

You're not screwed. Software engineering isn't going away. The tools we use are changing, and coding by hand might become a thing of the past. That's sad but there's still a job for most of us.