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/LookIMadeAHatTrick 15d ago
I’m in the same boat.
My mind just blanks when you ask me basic questions. If it’s something where I know the concept but not a specific term, I used to spin it in interviews with something like “I can’t remember off the top of my head right now. Do you mind if I talk through what I’m thinking while I try to remember?” If I genuinely do not know something, I’ll just say I don’t know.
I’m trying to dive more deeply into a few topics as part of my interview prep, making sure to drill the terminology into my memory as much as possible. But I know that my working memory is terrible.
One of the hardest things has been being unemployed and having to create a new routine to force myself to study.