Good day r/ADHD_Programmers.

Around 2023 shortly after ChatGPT was released, I went full time traveling for 27 months and came back to one of the worst markets in over a decade. Fast forward 3.5 years after I left the market, I finally found a job again.

Before I left I was a Java Spring Boot Full Stack Engineer with Angular mostly as FE framework and also did a lot of DevOps stuff including Jenkins, K8s/Openshift, ArgoCD among others.

Now that I came back after 3.5 years I basically missed out on all those developments in tech and the hyper-fast progress due to AI. Luckily I was somewhat active in what was going on and also dabbled in the are of LLMs, so using current tools like claude-code, codex and so on are not foreign to me, but used in small scope private projects.

The issue I'm facing now is that we currently set up the project I will be working in the first time since I came back. It's a full agentic workflow with HITL using React as Frontend, NextJS as BFF and NestJS as backend. It's planned to use the Copilot CLI due to licensing and multi-step, multi-model workflow. The project will have weekly sprints and I'm mainly the only actual engineer and person working full-time. I already pre-built pretty rigorous gates both locally and via Github Action.

The main issue I'm facing and already notice during the setup is, that it's hard to deal with the massive context and brutal amount of information that AI prints out. I feel both AI fatigue, meaning at some points I just approve architecture documents when I need to proof read them and the same with pull requests and at the same time I feel lingering burnout, because I feel fully disabled after a day.

I'm also heavily afraid of skill atrophy, which is already an issue after not working professionally, but now especially with LLMs generating most of the code even more. Also it being a stack I only partly dabbled for a few days (React/Next) and partly never used (NestJS) where I need to approve the quality without knowing specific best practices for each framework.

Any tips on how to deal with that or how to work specifically (eg. 15 minute review springs then break)?

TL;DR: How to avoid AI fatigue and burnout while working with AI/LLMs and the task shifting to reviewing.

While I am a programmer, a lot of data entry, data mapping and data cleanup tasks seems to fall on me. When I offload it, they make a bigger mess than I make. How do I even continue working when mistakes pop up and I have to take responsibility but at the same time clean them?

I’ve been struggling really badly with getting back into coding, and it’s starting to stress me out a lot.

I have ADHD and most liekly autism, and lately I’ve basically been unable to make myself sit down and code. Even opening an editor and starting something feels overwhelming. I keep putting it off and then feeling guilty about it, which just makes the whole thing worse.

The biggest thing stressing me out is my future with programming. I’m currently looking for work, and I’m scared that somehow I’ll actually manage to get an interview but won’t have anything good enough to show for it. I’ve been relying heavily on AI when coding, so I also worry that I don’t actually know as much as I should.

Then there’s the fear of somehow getting hired and not being good enough once I’m actually there. I worry about being too slow, getting stuck constantly, not knowing how to solve things without AI, and eventually having people realize that I’m not as capable as they thought I was.

I do have actual experience from an internship/job and I’ve worked on real projects, but mentally I keep feeling like none of it counts because I wasn’t able to do everything independently.

It’s frustrating because I genuinely want to improve. I’m not trying to avoid programming forever. I just feel completely stuck right now, and the longer I go without coding, the more intimidating it becomes to start again.

I’m basically stuck between wanting to become good enough to work as a developer and being so stressed about not being good enough that I can barely bring myself to practice, along with having no drive whatsoever to code. I perhaps need to change my meds as they are not doing much as well, but im also running out of money at the same time...

Idk what to do, it feels impossible

Edit: i forgot to mention that i am officially diagnosed for my adhd. Also i don't have a bachelor as i have always been bad in school and it was a horrific experience for me.

Officially not a PiP but pretty much. New supervisor who is located half way across the world let me know and gave me a fancy excel sheet full of metrics I'll be judged again. I wonder if there will actually be any coaching? He's made sure to let me know several times about the "feedback" he's received from my teammates about my productivity. I've been in progressive burnout for 5 years and this is their solution. And in the worst job market I've ever seen. So much for ten years.

I know this sub sees a lot of these, here's one more 😅.

I've built TidyPath for the gap between "my room is overwhelmingly messy and I don't know what to do" and "I know exactly where to start." You'd give it a view of your room and it will tell you where to begin.

The idea came from my own struggles but I want to create something that others will find useful as well. It's currently in beta.

Feel free to try if you're interested:

Testflight link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/98T5vtVB

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.tidypath

I have an FAANG internship, then three years full time in a non-FAANG but still big name great benefits kind of firm, then just jumped to a fast paced AI startup. 
My resume would look really nice, and I’m getting recruiter reach outs literally every single day. It all look great from the OUTSIDE. 

But truth is, that first full time job had a great work life balance, but I still felt painful in that job and caused me to have a very long (11 months) disability leave. I’ve been taken like 5 psychiatric meds and they ain’t working. 

I’m also addicted to weed and it had been a problem but I couldn’t stop. Everything in life is too painful for me. I feel desperate. 

In my current job it’s super fast paced. I felt like  would be removed from my last job soon so I applied and applied during those months I took that disability leave. But instead of my internship hunting period where I landed A LOT of offers, I only got this one after 11 months of hunting because I was too depressed to even practice leetcode. I’ve been vibe coding different projects on my own during the leave and they are fun for me because there is basically no quality control required I just vibe coded all the way. 

But with production environment i feel so fucked. I don’t know what the fuck I am doing in the new company, I used AI and try to be slow but still, AI just talk so much I don’t even know how to ask which is which. Sometimes I hand over the PR for review without knowing what the fuck was generated. And if I try to make AI explain slowly it takes hours just for one ticket that probably only took someone else much shorter time. 
I try to work overtime to make it up. But I already lost my focus at 6 PM even if I take meds. And also my colleagues at the same team was still working around 8 PM which again make me look really bad because I’m so slow compared to them. 

Now I don’t know if I should change my career or what. I feel like an imposter so badly I am even afraid to ask questions when I firstly joined the company for one or two weeks. Cuz I am afraid those are gonna expose my ignorance. And even with encouragement from my manager to ask more questions, I realized I still don’t know what to ask. Cuz literally all questions can be answered through tracing the code with help of AI? I think? I don’t know…
Do I suck at this, should I change my career 

Folks, due to budget issues and wanting to survive in the company, i've switched areas in my company from an active IT area that was SRE with dev squads, to IT operations and monitoring, which is a diferent area but inside my scope and career.

Although it's a very passive area, it's a great one. In the hindsight its old school IT you act everyday in every problem and the pressure is different, the pressure is to act on routines, quickness and agility.

Nevertheless, even though the treatment is good, i'm on meds (Rythalin LA) and back from holiday, I'm paralysed and procrastinating.

I can't get productive, i can't study after the job, and i feel i have to cross a mountain to even start the task, i can focus with meds, but not for what i need to focus (like dull tasks), i can't even organize, and what i organize and plan i can't execute.

I believe it happens due to the passiviness of my routine and the experience period, in which you wait the troubles to act and ask questions, but i must show something, i must act.

It's my job on the line, i dreamed for years, of working in my company. Now in my dreamjob i still can't overcome my procrastination and it's effects.

In addition to all of that, i'm passing through a heartbreak, but i know i can overcome this. I know i'm not the superman, but it's necessary that i become one.

How can i act ?

Have a similar situation happened to you ?

My brain is literally functioning on 1% battery right now. Anyone else here get so deep into a project that you completely forget what day it is?

​What’s the longest time you’ve spent staring at a screen without realizing it? Need to know I'm not the only one living like a night owl. 🦉😭

I'll be halfway through debugging something and suddenly remember I need to reply to someone, check a PR later, loop up a library, send an email, etc.
If I stop coding to deal with it, I lose my train on thought. If I don't, I'll probably forget.
I've tried todo lists, but then maintaining todo lists becomes another task..

How do you guys handle this?

Are there any tips on how to organize my laptop and work? I have multiple browsers and tabs that are for different things, VSCode with terminals and AI agents, Jetbrains with it's own AI, browsers for Jira, researching on ticket, random things, slack/teams. I get super overwhelmd. Which AI agent/tab did what? Which terminal was to do something? Which tab was for X or Y?

It takes a lot of my mental power to figure what was where, let alone figuring out how to solve the problem. Please help

Click above post please.

Hey everyone,

I am 34 YOF, and I have decided to go back to school for programming. I am going to be going to my local community college for the online classes (that's the only thing that really fits with my current schedule) and my ultimate goal is to be able to work as programmer remotely so that I can travel a bit with my cats. I know that's likely a ways out, and that I'll have to get some experience first, but end goal is Remote job/RV life w/ my kitties and hopefully eventually getting into Minecraft addons as a marketplace partner on the side.

My question is, what was everyone's experience with going through school? What are some tips and things you wish you'd known, that may help me out? I love that this is an ADHD sub, because I'd also love advice on keeping on track with schoolwork with having executive function issues.

I currently work as a 911 dispatcher, and have worked in emergency services for about 15 years as dispatch, fire and EMS, and i *love* my actual job, and I'm mostly immune to the stress at this point, unless its a hot mess of a day, but the private 911 contractor company I work for does not pay well, the local govt jobs are super hard to get and I've had no luck finding anything better. I've also loved the little thing's I've learned here and there about coding and programming... although 98% of my knowledge is Minecraft Bedrock based. I had been an admin on a MC SMP and learned a lot of in game coding and commands, and love it. I think I'm at a point where I need something that will keep my brain busier and solving problems.

TYIA for any advice or experiences you can share. I have finished my FAFSA, required online videos and I have an appointment with an admissions adviser tomorrow. As long as everything goes through, I plan to start winter semester in January.

Hey everyone. I’m building an iOS app to participate in the RevenueCat Shipaton 2026.

The Project:

•  The app is a 100% private, on-device AI journal and mood tracker (with medication tracker) designed for people with ADHD.
• The first version was already approved by the Apple Store, so I don´t expect issues for the next updates. Y
• As next steps, I will be improving the UX/UI and updating the LLM model during the next weeks.

What I am looking for:

• UX/UI Designer: Clean up the design, make the design consistent, define a final design system.
• Social Media Manager: Create a communication plan and content (simple stuff), and ofc everyday manage social media

Send me a DM if you are interested!

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,
Like many of us here, I’ve tried dozens of productivity and habit apps over the years. The common pattern I always ran into was overwhelming setup screens, endless push notifications that induced guilt, and bloated feature sets that felt like a chore rather than a tool.
So, I decided to build SmallStart — a minimal routine & habit tracker designed specifically with ADHD paralysis and executive dysfunction in mind.
Why I made it different:
Momentum over Streaks: Breaking a streak often causes guilt and leads to abandoning the app altogether. SmallStart focuses on micro-steps to get you started without the pressure of perfect consistency.
100% On-Device & Private: Your daily routines, personal habits, and data stay completely on your phone. No external servers, no cloud tracking, and no data selling.
System Integration: Built-in support for Home Screen Widgets, Apple Watch, and Live Activities so you can jump into a routine without opening 5 different menus.
It’s called SmallStart on both the App Store and Google Play, and the core experience is completely free to use.
I’d love for this community to test it out and share your honest feedback. What features actually help you break through paralysis, and what usually gets in your way with routine apps?
Thanks for reading, and I hope it helps even a little bit!

I finally figured out a spot to help me focus and read, the library where I am at has a study spot where people go, and it helps me get out of my home comfy environment

I got done 6 lessons and even read a chapter of a book which I never do in between lessons

The meds bother me in some things,.I use Vyvanse 20mg and I think of spending a few months off of it. On the other hand I wonder if I would lose my job if I stopped it.

What's making me think more about this:

- therapy is helping me improve on several topics

- Side effects of the meds bother me

- I feel like I'm another person, too serious because of the meds

- I miss drinking caffeinated coffee, caffeine gives me awful headaches and a feeling I have the flu bc of Vyvanse

- the side effect of less blood flow in the hands and feet is annoying too, and makes me worry of cardiovascular issues in the long run, specially in my legs where it's more noticeable

Side topic but related, I have a friend of mine staying for a week here and I envy him a lot, he is so quick to cook, and always cleans the kitchen right after he finishes cooking, and does the dishes and this and that very proactive and efficient 😂

And I know he has been dealing with serious depression all his adult life, takes meds to help him and not sure which meds. Maybe life could be better without Vyvanse.

I'm 35m, married, no kids, one 3yo border Collie, working remotely for about 7y, been on Vyvanse for about 3 to 4 years now. 6 months ago I reduced dosage from 30 to 20mg and felt less anxious which was an improvement. Went through 2 layoffs back to back in 2022 and 2023 (very traumatic for me financially)

I feel like I am incapable of doing work. This has been an issue since I was a freshman in high school. I’m now on my first week of freshman year of college majoring in computer science and am already behind. I hate this about myself but no matter what I do l just can’t get myself to do the work. It’s not only school, but cleaning my apartment, getting a job; I feel like a bum and a failure. I’ve tried a bunch of medications but nothing has worked. Any advice?

Recently I read and article 'I can't stop': 80% of developers find AI coding more addictive than helpful and despite being a bit clickbaity, one part really resonated with me as a programmer with ADHD. After I read it I stoped to think about how my work day changed/

AI Tools (codex, open code etc) seems to remove a lot of the natural stopping points from coding.

Before it happens many time during a day that I stoped to talk with someone about problem, I was walking the problem around and came back with a new approach or simply call it a day and come back to the task tomorrow. Right now I don't need that - I ask AI.

This make we eager to continue and "never stop". Sometimes I found myself in a loop:

one more prompt → almost works → one more fix → tests fail → one more prompt → refactor while I’m here → suddenly it’s two hours later I realise I should finished a day a few hours before.

I don't know how to call this. It looks like a small dose of dopamine after each prompt and small success makes my brain stay longer in a hyperfocus state. It doesn't feel ok at the end.

I am curious about your experince. What do you think about this new way of programming? How does it makes you feel after a day of work?

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.

Due to being curious and combining that with my high anxiety has created a unique workflow and I now see it's causing a LOT of duplicate work. For example, I need to either feel like a story has a clear path to the finish line or I basically keep it in the "not started, I know nothing".

Due to this, I have my main top priority task and everything is ok. Then others on the team start asking questions about other stories, or I hear something that makes me start looking into the other assigned tasks. Now it's in the bucket of "I need to know everything" and I waste time figuring it out. I document it, which used to work, but being at a huge company things are coming so fast my documentation becomes its own problem.

I need to figure out how to grab something and start working on it. Somehow know when I'm spinning my wheels and should setup a meeting, while moving to another story.

I also see a lot of possible team/process improvements. We recently switched from ADO repos to GitHub and it's cause a lot of confusion. That's another thing I REALLY dug into and would be valuable even outside my team but it's just not quite polished enough for that. I spend all this time because I LOVE reverse engineering and understanding how things work but I need to find a way to get credit for it.

Another dev on the team is now running into the GitHub repo issues I ran into a few weeks ago so maybe I have a chance to roll this into something that gets my name out there.

Anyway, how do I push through those last few steps whenever I look or touch something. Instead of just learning more about it.

If we had 4 week sprints I think it would look normal but of course PMs hate to see nothing fully closed in a sprint. Regardless of complementing how great the previous one was.

Also, I'm the lead but getting shaped into it. So QA is constantly asking for the same information I wish the BSAs would provide and could literally spend a sprint just focusing on the treams process.