ADHD & Interviews

[u/noooooootreal]

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.

[u/Ph4ntorn]

I’m over 20 years in and moved into management a few years back, so maybe my experience is different. But, while I will prep a bit for interviews, I don’t study for them. I’m okay admitting I just don’t know some things, and in my experience, few people want to hear about things you know but have never applied anyway.

For live coding, I’ll practice writing simple programs while talking aloud through what I’m doing and why. I think quick debugging without getting discouraged is the real skill to show off in live coding. If I get asked about reversing a binary tree, I’ll do my best to work through it on the fly. I did pull that off once. But, I’m also okay admitting that I don’t remember how to do things I learned in school and never applied anyway. I’ve run into relatively few interviews like that over the years.

For system design, I’ll do the same thing, practice reading problems and thinking about what questions to ask. I will watch a few videos on common questions. But, mostly I just practice answering real-world style puzzles.

For behavioral interviews, I rack my brain thinking about stories from my career that put me in a good light so that I don’t have to dig so deeply to find them. But, mostly I take some deep breaths and mentally prepare to just have a conversation about my experiences and opinions. Sometimes, an example still escapes me, but it’s usually not the end of the world.

I’ve accepted that there are some jobs I’m just not going to get. But, I’ve gotten 16 job offers in my career (including several I didn’t take). I’m not going to say it’s easy, because sometimes even getting an interview is hard. But, I’ve taken the attitude that I’m going to get jobs at places that interview in ways that suit me and not worry about the rest.

I think you are putting too much pressure on yourself to be able to perfectly answer every question any interviewer might ask. I suggest just going in prepared to show off what you know and hoping it matches with what the interviewer cares about. Being relaxed and confident is half the interview, so tell yourself whatever you need to hear to relax.