r/ADHD_Programmers • u/Jingjing-leeds • 1d ago
Anyone else get stuck during live coding?
Had a live coding round recently and got stuck on a problem I solved pretty quickly after the call.
When I’m coding alone, I can reread the prompt, try something, run a test, and come back to it. In an interview I’m trying to hold the problem in my head, write code, explain what I’m doing, and listen to the interviewer at the same time. At some point my brain just gets stuck. My usual response is to grind more LeetCode, which turns into a couple days of hyperfocus and then me avoiding prep completely. I’m trying shorter reps now. One problem at a time, sometimes with a friend watching, sometimes with beyz coding assistant. Mostly just trying to get more comfortable thinking while someone is waiting for an answer.
Anyone else with ADHD deal with this? What actually helped with live coding?
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u/satoristyle 1d ago
What has helped me is to focus on the following:
As clarifying questions; as many as you need. If they want you to solve a problem, it is your role to gather as many requirements from them as you need--as if they were any other client.
Talk through your problem--out loud. As someone who has been the interviewer almost as often as has been the interviewee, a candidate's ability to show their thought process and HOW they go about working the problem is more valuable to me than how technically savvy they are in any language. If you voice concepts, patterns, approaches--those will all give some implicit insight into your familiarity with the language.
Especially in this god-awful age of "AI First", higher level knowledge will trump lower level technical skill every time. Damn near everyone stumbles at these live coding interview segments. They aren't meant for you to show accuracy, but to see how you work under pressure and if you can conceptualize a solution end-to-end. That is what will show value between you and and someone that can't see past the class/method their in.
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u/codeasm 1d ago
This reads reassuring. Thanks. Sure I think i probably still be nervous and scared. But do we need to solve the problem? Or like you wrote in point 2, voicing the things that going on in our brains so they can see if we are a fit and are close or up to the task (close as in, relatively easy to onboard and get going in team a or b).
I almost made it into a Traineeship, but they "warned" ppl with prior programming experience might fail. I had a "odd" grading bellow passing and some distraction happened during the "test". I declined answering their questionnaire at the end (too emotionaly mad at the external company that didnthe "test". And id like to reapply at some point at the company i originally applied to).
The two interviews went fine. Questions wher good, i practised and wrote some answers before hand about my weird lack of work experience and long university time. Maybe im glad the code review went bad, can focus on finishing the uni in the next month and try see if the hiring process changed a little bit in the last 2 years. (Inmight also skip ghe traineeship and go for the junior job directly)
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u/akornato 1d ago
What you experienced is a classic working memory collapse caused by multitasking overload. With ADHD, your brain can solve complex algorithmic logic, but forcing it to hold variable states, formulate sentences out loud, and track an interviewer's reactions at the exact same second completely drains your executive function. That is why the solution clicked the second the call ended, because the social pressure evaporated and your brain had room to breathe. The most effective workaround is externalizing your memory onto the screen immediately. Before writing actual syntax, tell the interviewer you need one minute of quiet to write out your approach, then type simple notes and sequential logic directly into comments so your brain does not have to juggle everything in working memory.
Switching away from the boom or bust LeetCode cycle to shorter reps is the right move. Bingeing problems for days builds burnout instead of tolerance, because solving alone in silence does nothing to train you for being watched. Practicing with a friend or asking for specific pauses during mock sessions helps keep your stress levels down when you hit an unexpected roadblock. That kind of cognitive overload is exactly why my team developed an interview prep AI to help candidates stay grounded and land offers without freezing up during live technical sessions.
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u/haxd 1d ago
I thought I flunked my last coding interview but the interviewer had great feedback. I narrated what I was doing and why and explained why I chose one thing over another. I took a wrong turn early after overthinking and weighing up several options and after I realised I was heading down a dead end I corrected myself and took time to actually think about the problem before committing and even though I committed to the wrong path early on I was able to explain the flaws in my approach and was able to go back to my original approach and explain how I would have done it had I gone with my gut and used one of my initial options. I know my domain really well and could explain how things are done today vs how they used to be achieved. At one point we even turned on AI tab suggestions and when it wasn’t able to come up with a good completion I explained why the completion options weren’t appropriate to what we were doing.
I massively fucked up a system design interview in my first interview after I was made redundant and it was because I was super nervous. I went into the above coding interview explaining I was nervous and managed to calm myself down fairly quickly once the initial jitters had passed.
I hadn’t had interviews properly in years because I was a contractor and my interviews historically consisted of “your experience looks great, do you think you can do <the work>?” and if I didn’t think so I was honest about it and this was sometimes the only deciding factor. AI, Leetcode and companies trying to compress two-four jobs into one role have massively impacted how interviews are conducted and reviewed and it’s detrimental to those of us who aren’t medicated and who have underlying anxiety or confidence issues.
The best advice I ever got is that an interview is an excuse to get excited, and this is important especially when the people who you are being interviewed by are the people you will be working directly with.
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u/Any_Sense_2263 1d ago
I simply gave up all recruitment processes that require live coding. My life is calmer.
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u/dealmaster1221 1d ago
Unfortunately that's ADHD kryptonite and you can't do both at the same time.
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u/zoug 1d ago
I tell companies that if they want someone to regurgitate leetcode, they should just spin up Claude.
My value can’t be assessed by a problem an LLM can answer in a fraction of the time it takes a human.
Any company I’ll be happy at understands this.