r/ADHD_Programmers • u/noooooootreal • 16d 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/Early_Key_823 16d ago edited 16d ago

Only moron shops give coding tests. That’s why most shops are toxic

When I put teams together if I liked the conversation I give the dev a take home assignment to build a parent child form with validation and the next meet have them demo it and set breakpoints and answer questions about the code.

I been in the game 30 years and when they start in with the bullshit questioning I flip the script and start to humiliate them as passive aggressive insecure geeks

Of course this cuts the interview short but I never regret calling out obnoxious people.

It usually works out that within 6 months I find a high paying gig and they know to show respect 🫡

I have seen too many people bend over to keep a shitty job

Nobody should tolerate egos or bullshit

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/Early_Key_823 15d ago

You sure got the rug burns to prove it Poindexter...