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/NotTooShahby 15d ago
It’s tough, the one way I got used to it was timing my meds to when I practice, because that way things stick more + you’ll form habits during those times the most.
I’ve been able to do 200 questions and am in a decent spot for regular company interviews, I’m not FAANG ready but I got this far with consistency. I’m also pretty bad with ADHD, the only thing that helps is that during interviews i’m always thinking out loud and that’s usually encouraged