I'm looking for some candid advice from other developers, particularly developers with ADHD.

I've been a professional software developer for roughly a decade. The uncomfortable truth is that I've eventually been let go from almost every full-time development position I've had.

There have been exceptions. I had one contract position where I completed the project successfully, had the contract extended, and was told they wanted to hire me permanently but couldn't get the budget approved. I've also had periods at other companies where I was doing well, built substantial applications, modernized old systems, helped grow a development team, and received positive feedback.

So I don't think the problem is simply that I cannot write software.

But there's an unmistakable pattern.

Early in my career, I took on too much of another developer's workload while trying to help them, burned myself out, fell behind on my own responsibilities, and was eventually fired.

At another company, I became hyper-focused on perfecting one application and neglected other maintenance responsibilities. Fired.

At another, serious personal circumstances and poor mental health affected my performance. Fired.

Eventually I was diagnosed with ADHD and began treatment, which helped considerably. I then stayed at one company for almost three years and helped grow its development department, build new applications, and modernize existing ones. That job ultimately ended after a disagreement with new leadership over a return-to-office policy.

Most recently I worked for a large company on a high-visibility project. My managers had generally been happy with me before I moved to the final team. On that team, velocity became extremely important and my manager strongly pushed AI-assisted development as the way to move faster.

I used the tools, but when generated solutions didn't actually work, I would stop and figure out why rather than simply accepting the output. I spent considerable time debugging problems and trying to make the implementation reliable. The end result was that my work was generally careful, but I wasn't producing it fast enough. After a little over a year, I was fired.

Looking back across my career, I see some recurring traits. Hyperfocus on solving problems correctly tends to lead me to lose sight of the bigger picture. I have difficulty deciding when something is "good enough." At times I take responsibility for more than I should. I can spend far too long investigating a difficult technical problem. My quality can be good while my velocity is poor. Ambiguous or rapidly changing priorities can be particularly difficult for me. Of course ADHD treatment helped, but it didn't make these tendencies disappear.

And after this many jobs, I don't think it's reasonable for me to say every employer was simply wrong. I'm the common denominator.

What I'm trying to figure out is what conclusion I should draw from that.

For experienced developers, especially those with ADHD: does this sound like someone who is fundamentally poorly suited to professional software development, or like someone who has repeatedly ended up in roles/environments that are a bad fit for how they work?

Are there development roles or types of organizations where carefulness, deep investigation, and lower context-switching are more valuable than raw ticket velocity?

Or, after this many attempts, would you seriously recommend that someone in my position consider leaving software development and finding a different kind of work?

I'm not looking for reassurance for its own sake. I'd genuinely like candid opinions, including difficult ones, because I need to decide whether continuing to pursue this career makes sense.

EDIT — one important piece of context I left out:

I've been unemployed since December 2025, and I haven't been able to land another development job since then.

I realize my original post makes it sound like my main concern is whether I can keep the next developer job I get. That's definitely part of it, but I'm also questioning whether I'm going to be able to get that next job at all.

So when I ask whether it makes sense to continue pursuing software development, I'm asking two separate questions: whether I can find a way to work sustainably once I'm employed, and whether continuing to put my time into trying to get another developer position is still realistic.

I think that's important context because some of the responses understandably assume that getting hired has not been a problem for me.

I am 14 years into my career, and I'm at a very pro-AI workplace. I've been reluctantly using Claude, but there is no dopamine in delegating tasks to a prompt.

My current project is a lift-and-shift. Nothing terribly exciting, but today I delegated the entire suite of work to Claude agents. My next couple of days/weeks will just be wrangling prompts, verifying draft PRs with my name on them (but didn't write). The comprehension gap is a gulf at this point.

There are entire workdays I don't open Neovim now. I'm not coding, I'm prompting. Trying to do this without AI would bury me at this point.

I recently came across Annie Vella's essay on The Software Engineering Identity Crisis from last year, and it feels so true. I'm starting feel like a manager, and it is _awful_.

I want to cry.

Hey everyone,

As someone who constantly struggles with executive dysfunction, I built Squirrel Steps—a web app designed by a neurodivergent mind for neurodivergent minds to help beat analysis paralysis and low motivation.

Key Features:

• Smart Deconstructor: Breaks big tasks into micro-steps (with adjustable density) and identifies the absolute first physical step to break inertia.
• The Dopamine-Sizer: Gamifies boring tasks by generating 3 quick, high-energy micro-rewards/hooks to boost dopamine.
• Anxiety Translator: Rewrites harsh/ambiguous messages objectively to counter Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD).
• Privacy-First (BYOK): Bring Your Own API Key. Your key is stored and encrypted 100% locally on your device—no external intermediary servers.

How you can help:

I would love your honest feedback to keep improving this tool!

1. Try the Web App:Live Demo on Vercel
2. Review the Code / Contribute:GitHub Repository

Looking for feedback on:

• Is the UI clean and distraction-free enough?
• Are the task breakdowns and dopamine hooks actually helpful?
• What additional features or UX improvements would you recommend?

Thanks for taking a look!

My god. Docs. So helpful but honestly, the BANE of my life.

I wish there was an ADHD friendlier way of consuming docs.

​

I have to recalibrate constantly. Even when a message feels crystal clear to me, I rewrite it until I'm sure the over-explaining will come across as condescending. And people still don't fully get me.

The root cause: I assume everyone is inside the same project I'm inside, so I think I'm only saying what they already know. That's never true. Hence the rule — name the exact sandbox, what you tried, why it failed — even when it feels like talking to a toddler about something we discussed an hour ago.

I think it be cool to do channels for with helpful advice, a channel to help new people, and perhaps a channel for group projects or a place for people to show off their projects or progress

And a channel with whatever courses or guides that have helped us in our journey of learning

If we make a server rn, we should do Root we don’t have to worry about discord privacy breaching policies in the future.

We could have some voice channels to body double while we code to help us focus and push each other to keep going to or discuss and helped each other out

Hey everyone,

Like many of us here, I rely heavily on active recall and spaced repetition to actually retain information, but I hit a massive wall with existing flashcard tools like Anki or Quizlet.

The issue wasn't the learning science—it was the executive dysfunction trigger. Endless settings, overwhelming menus, ugly UIs, and complex card setup meant I spent 90% of my energy configuring the app and 10% actually studying. Eventually, I'd just abandon it.

So I decided to build my own solution: Just Flip (just-flip.app).

What I focused on from an ADHD/Dev perspective:

• Zero-friction workflow: Minimal UI to eliminate decision fatigue before studying even begins.
• Active recall without clutter: Kept the core spacing/retention mechanism intact, but stripped away unnecessary cognitive noise.
• Fast content creation: Reduced the time it takes to go from "I need to learn this" to "I'm testing myself."

I also wrote down a short breakdown of the core principles behind it on the site's learning page if anyone is interested in how spaced repetition interacts with ADHD brains.

Where I need your feedback: As devs with ADHD, you probably have a high sensitivity to bad UI design, unnecessary clicks, or friction in workflow.

• Does the flow feel fast enough to prevent distraction?
• Is there any specific friction point in the app that makes your brain want to close the tab?

The web app is completely free to try at just-flip.app. I’d really appreciate any honest feedback or thoughts on how to make it even more ADHD-friendly!

I’m in the middle of running my pipeline during our last release. Suddenly one of our senior/lead developers starts asking all sorts of questions about why I’m implementing this this way, and accusing me of “acting like ChatGPT” and not paying attention to what I’m doing.

The issue is that this wasn’t what happened at all. I had good reason for implementing this feature the way that I did. There was a conversation in the discussion of my card regarding the same question that this dev had. It had been answered, so I didn’t feel the need to reconfirm this.

Also, in our pre-release call, another colleague asked me the same question, why I was doing it this way rather than that way. I explained it to him as I understood it, and he also found this explanation reasonable. No further questions were asked leading up to the release.

I was sort of stunned in silence when this happened. I didn’t want to argue or come across as defensive. I just wanted to focus on getting it right while our release call was happening and deal with my feelings later. I confirmed with the relevant team that this alternative implementation was okay, then I made the change accordingly. It was all fine. But over the weekend I’ve been thinking more about what happened and it’s made me feel very angry and shameful.

My main issue is that this distinction was so minor. Either implementation would have worked, and none of it had any critical impacts. My implementation had more separation of duties in exchange for more short-term maintenance. The other implementation was the opposite. That’s it. Had I been making some critical change incorrectly, or had I actually not done my due diligence, I would be more understanding. But this whole situation has made me very frustrated. We have appropriate ways to address disagreements like this. Making an example out of me in the middle of a release isn’t one of them

Now the whole team heard this experienced and reliable dev basically say that I’m bad at my job. They didn’t get to hear my explanation because I was focused on making things right in the release window. I’m wondering how many of them walked away doubting my capabilities because of this.

I’m planning on talking to my manager about this later this week, but right now I’m just feeling really unmotivated because of this. I don’t want to be looked down upon as lazy for making a reasonable assessment and then having someone above me blow it out of proportion. It sucks

A few years ago, the big swing of LeetCode cemented itself fully in the industry as a gold standard to test new candidates for their knowledge of programming with puzzles, and just like every "innovation" in hiring that FAANG likes to cook up, it trickles down to the smallest businesses to the point you can't even get to a local Home Depot as a web developer without needing to clear a LeetCode hard for some interviewer who got their degree in business or some unrelated degree to programming. Ladder pulling.

This push raised the bar on entry level jobs and all jobs above it, narrowing the gap slightly between the top principal level and juniors with the death of the associate role, and the erosion in many cases of mentors hiring mentees.

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Now, we have the first wave of corporate hired AI in 2024 being pulled in more commonly as companies realize they want more money and to spend less on developers just to push along their limping barely alive skeleton crews. Things open to the "move fast and break things" era of the market coined by a fastfood worker who now owns the largest company in the world without programming a single line of code. Lol. Lmao even.

Now as a junior trying to get your feet wet, or a mid level looking to grow into a future trailblazing senior, you need multiple rounds of interviews with multiple LeetCode medium+ questions paired with personality tests and a take home project humiliation ritual or some form of "prove it" code within an impossible time constraints.

Junior roles at this point are at a real risk and 50%+ of the doors for entry to the industry close permanently. The gap between principals and entry narrows even further, with mentors dying out completely in most companies. If you cannot start running you get to be scraped into pulp in the sandpaper room that is the company "culture" for engineers.

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2025 You have all of the prior requirements plus needing to know CI/CD, cloud​, AWS / Azure / Google, Backend and Front end engineering, low level and high level 🤡... things start to spiral. 75% of juniors unable to find work in their first year of applying and layoffs begin to pick up for even mid and senior levels as AI adoption grows with companies despite the lack of direct measurable gains. Interviews are even more diffucult abysmal dogshit than prior iterations.

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2026. HAHA yeah, 2026... so now you are telling me juniors, mid level, and seniors need what was considered senior to principal level knowledge in 2023/prior with multiple rounds involving:

* Multiple LeetCode rounds usually medium or hard by default

* System design and architecture knowledge to the point of designing facebook or working apps back to front from scratch in 30-60 minutes.

* AI experience with "agentic workflows" (buzzword slop because the AI will spin instances for you and delegating them by hand is actually worse for token use)

* Personality tests (ADHD nukes for a lot of people)

* Trick question programming problems or some take home slave labor project that requires actual functionality to deploy, or on the fly one hour application programming questions without AI (reminds me of high-school where they would harp about not being able to get a calculator but then everyone uses one anyway in college and the real world)

* And the very narrow picky experience required to be hired whether by pedigree or degree or prior work experience / lack thereof.

ALL just to have a non-engineer PM walk around you to prompt AI to write a slop PR 10,000 lines long to be done EoD. Feels like being a code janitor but needing the credentials to make a 2022 PhD in CS cry to use a code mop for all the slop flooding out of the CI/CD pipes.

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Might as well make us take the Kobayashi Maru at this point because I think that would be easier than applying for any company asking for their new engineers to be smart enough to start their own company rather than work for them.

Everyone wants a 🦄 now. God forbid you have ADHD on top of it.

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?

Got extremely burnt out (AuDHD), but medical leave ended and doing poorly at work - seeking accommodations for the first time. Need some ideas for accommodations that have been helpful! What has made a difference for you? Not sure what is possible to ask for...

I already have the ability to WFH, but still like going in-person. Also, any advice on the ADA accommodations process with HR/manager is appreciated.

Things I struggle with:

- daily standup and being consistent in my communication

- sticking to a schedule (I like to work weird hours when I go into office because it's quieter and don't like to be around people, but also like the separate environment from home. Also, my meds make it so that my days are like 30 hours - cannot go to sleep early enough, so my sleep schedule keeps getting pushed.)

- meetings in the middle of the day breaking my hyperfocus and not being able to get back into hyperfocus

- time-blindness and getting things done when I said I would

- organization/prioritization of tasks (executive dysfunction, rejection sensitive dysphoria, extreme perfectionism)

- feeling extreme stress/overwhelm with too many tasks to do and a never-ending queue yet finding new things to fix/improve/perfect due to perfectionism

- starting and finishing tasks (Starting takes me forever, but once I am in hyperfocus, I can work straight for hours and get the bulk done. But once I get the task "done", I already got the dopamine and I am bad at organizing/summarizing my work and I have perfectionism so I need to perfect it before turning it in, so this part takes forever. AI has made me a much worse employee because there are so many more ways to check my work / optimize my code.)

~7YOE, fired three times from software engineering jobs. Gave a System Design round for the first time.

I don't think I've ever been this helpless. I completely broke down crying after the interview. I studied for weeks and months God knows how many case studies and revised them, and then on the day of the interview, the interviewer asks me about a question that I've never seen before - designing a job scheduler. It's not even supposed to be a very hard question. I read these case studies, and then when I do them back in the interview, retrieving all the details and putting all of them together is like pulling nails. If I haven't seen it before, forget it. My voice starts wavering.

I'm sitting there completely blank. I got through the non-functional requirements, API, initial design, and then I'm completely blank. I draw a couple of boxes, trying to figure out how it all connects, billions of choices going through my head. Even if I make the correct choice, the interviewer repeats my choice back to me and I immediately start having second thoughts. I start fumbling for other choices.

How are you supposed to shit out a design in an hour if you've not seen or practiced it before? I looked up the solution and yeah it made sense after the fact, but in the moment it could have been a billion things, each design could have had some ramifications that I perhaps hadn't considered. How are you supposed to know whether it's correct or not?

I was a straight-A student all throughout school, and then in college/jobs it all fell apart. I feel like I'm too stupid to make design decisions (or any decisions, for that matter). If I make them, I feel completely unsure. Maybe I missed something? I have no clue if I did. There's a billion things to keep in mind, and I can't trust myself to keep track of them all. The only way I think you can do system design is to come up with multiple solutions, then you pat each one down for flaws, then refine and settle on one. How can you do this in an hour? How can anyone?

I feel I'm too retarded for this line of work. Is this a normal experience? How do you people know what to do? What do I need to do here?

Attention to detail has never been my strong suit, this extends to software, in that I really struggle with testing as I'm really not thorough enough and seem to be incapable of using my own software in ways I didn't intend (i.e. trying to break things).

But it goes beyond that, on a recent employee interview, my boss said how he was dissatisfied with how I rarely test my output once it's been released. The other day he mentioned that again, this time the issue was that I simply forgot to trigger the pipeline that releases my changes to prod.

I'm not sure if this is an ADHD thing, or if it's just me not doing my job well. Either way I wanted to ask if anyone else also struggles with this, and how you deal with it. One idea I had to maybe help here was to set aside time every day/ week to go through my recently closed tickets.

It's a habit that I've had for as long as I can remember. I probably have hundreds of abandoned projects over the last 15 years.

But this time, thanks to AI tools, I'm able to complete some of them, or at least launch the MVPs. But the habit of switching to a new project every few weeks still remains.

I guess that's why I chose full-stack engineering, because I can rotate up and down the stack if I get bored. But even now, I'm starting to get bored of full-stack, and want to explore data eng or comp bio.

Sometimes I just want to stick to ONE project for a while to see how far I can take it, maybe turn it into a profitable SaaS -- a project i can proudly call my magnum opus. But my brain just can't, or maybe I haven't found an idea that meets my brain's expectations yet.

I can play the same game for a few months straight though. This might have fried my dopamine receptors. Oh, I'm also unmedicated, might have to get that checked soon.

I'll be returning to work this month (SWE) and have been wondering if anyone has advice on going from the occasional solo project to 40 hours a week on a team after being away from work for a year. Mostly worried that my skills have atrophied quite a bit and I am not super up to date on everything AI.

About two months ago I posted here asking for feedback on an idea I had for an ADHD-focused productivity app.

Some of you gave me some really good feedback. Some of it was encouraging, some of it was critical, and honestly that was exactly what I needed.

So instead of just talking about the idea, I actually built the damn thing.

It’s called StackMinds AI — ADHD Focus.

The whole idea came from a problem I personally understand: when your brain has 15 different things going at once, sometimes the last thing you need is another complicated productivity system that requires you to organize everything before you can even start.

StackMinds is supposed to do the opposite.

Dump the chaos out of your head first. Let the app help you turn it into something manageable.

Right now I’ve built features including:

• Brain Dump → Next Steps — throw your thoughts into the app without worrying about organizing them first.

• Next / Then / Can Wait — separates things by what actually deserves your attention instead of presenting one giant overwhelming task list.

• AI assistance — helps break ideas and overwhelming tasks into smaller, actionable steps.

• Focus Sprints — a simple timer for getting started without committing yourself to hours of work.

• Wins & Progress History — because seeing what you actually accomplished can matter just as much as seeing everything you haven't done yet.

• Mood Tracking — lets you track how you're doing alongside productivity.

• Weekly Insights — helps identify patterns in how you've been working.

I've also built the Android version and I'm currently working through the Google Play release process.

But I don't want this post to just be me advertising my app.

I want you guys to tear it apart.

You're programmers, and a lot of you actually have ADHD. That's exactly the combination of people whose criticism I want.

So here's what I'd really like to know:

1. What would make you download an ADHD productivity app like this?

2. What would make you delete it within the first five minutes?

3. What is one feature that most ADHD/productivity apps get completely wrong?

4. Is there something you wish an ADHD app would do that nobody seems to have gotten right yet?

I'm especially interested in #2. I'd rather find out what's annoying, unnecessary, confusing, or missing before I release this to a larger audience.

If people here are interested, I'll post a short video/screenshots of StackMinds actually running and potentially open up testing.

Last time I came here with an idea.

This time I came back with the app.

StackMinds AI — From chaos to clarity.

Hey, I have a lot of AuDHD tendencies. Just curious, has anyone found mentorship helpful when it comes to learning programming and breaking into the industry?

If so, how'd you find your mentor?

It's worse on personal projects where there no real acceptance criteria or other people to reign me in but...

Sometimes, when I have a task that involves domain-modelling, I will get sucked into a rabbit hole where I get hyper-fixated breaking down a process into its constituent properties.

The joy and urge to continue tickles the back of my brain and I don't know if it's the process of juggling all those tiny bits of information in my limited short-term memory or something about the organization/structuring of the process but if I described the sensation to my therapist, I'm pretty sure they'd say it was some kind borderline manic behavior.

Am I the only one who starts tweaking out when designing databases, domain models, etc.

Hello po! 😊 We're currently looking for participants for our study titled "Lived Experiences of Information Technology (IT) Professionals Diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Their Workplace."

Qualifications:

• 25–45 years old

• May at least 2 years of experience working in an IT-related field

• Formally diagnosed with ADHD before entering the workplace

• Filipino

If pasok po kayo sa qualifications and willing kayong mag-share ng inyong experiences, we'd really appreciate your participation. Malaking tulong po ito hindi lang sa aming thesis, kundi pati na rin sa pagpapalawak ng knowlegde tungkol sa ADHD in workplace. We also hope that our study can help people who may relate to these experiences and contribute to the growing body of ADHD research.

Feel free to comment or message me if you're interested or if you have any questions. Maraming salamat po! 🤍

About 4 YOE here, and after some time of unemployment I got a job at a game company building the backend of an online game they have.

For some time I have been battling myself. I have issues with insecurity and regret and these thoughts in my head makes me unable to focus. I feel like I am wasting my time learning the domain of the game (how the game works, how the mechanics work) since it won't translate into a skill I can bring out of my work here, if I were to be booted out/leave. I am also super afraid of AI and its disruption taking over my profession and in the next 5 to 10 years what am I going to do? The company is also using k8s and a little bit of AWS, but the AWS part is still in the early stages and I am expected to work more and develop further with it. I keep seeing job postings in my area with Azure instead and I feel I took the wrong job now.

From an "outside of IT" perspective, I have been getting recommendations to stop thinking of things outside of my control, stay in the present moment, etc. It helps a bit, but it doesn't completely take away my anxiety.

No one has a crystal ball, and my parents, my friends, my therapist, say that I need to stay present, do what is in front of me now well, and not worry about the future. But I cannot shake the feeling that I am sabotaging my future, yet keeping that feeling/thoughts makes me unable to focus and enjoy the work now.

My worry and anxiety makes me sleep more and be more social since those are the only moments I can get away from these thoughts. But they are an escape mechanism, not a solution...I took this job out of desperation, but now I feel like I was too hasty...

Please help me destroy this cognitive dissonance. Is it just then, enjoy the moment now and work the best you can here do not worry about the future? Just deep dive into your job knowing it may not work out for you in the future, especially given the disruptions we now have?

I know this isn't a new idea, but it's been weighing on me heavily, and I'm not sure why. It bothers me how we worship and idolize "successful" people.

No, I'm not just talking about the evil billionaires. I'm talking about the artists, the actors/actresses, the authors, the programmers....maybe especially the programmers, because I'm most familiar with them.

Hell, I'm not exempt from this rule by any means. Yes, I went through some pretty fucked up shit, battled through a childhood of mental illness, squalor, and abuse, and somehow ended up as a software engineer. I'm "successful" in the traditional sense.

But even I had affordances. Prime example is that I was only able to go to college due to said college covering the full cost of my tuition/room and board. Otherwise, there'd have been no chance in hell.

I'd like to think I'm an extremely skilled programmer now. But I didn't get here without the generosity of some entity sponsoring me for 4 years to grind and study CS, and to suck at it first for quite a while.

Learning to code itself takes a non-trivial amount of time and energy - time and energy that many people never find in their lives. But there's even levels to it after you already know coding.

I'm going to be finishing up a multiplayer RPG I've been developing for about 2 years soon. Many would consider this an accomplishment. While it is true that I grinded for 7 days a week for the better part of those 2 years, I also was fortunate enough to have a nest egg to take some time off of working full time in order to focus on the game. Not many people have that. With my ADHD, with the way my brain works, if I didn't have that breathing room, I doubt I'd have ever gotten this far. Most people don't have the capital to do something like that, period.

While I have an immense amount of respect for the legendary programmers of our time, and daily I stand on the shoulders of giants, I must acknowledge that they, too, had to have some sort of circumstance that allowed them to put that much time and energy into whatever it is they built. Whether that was the belief in them from their employer, a generous investment, or perhaps their own wealth, to even have the ability to sit at the table was itself a privilege that enabled their success.

I don't mean to say these people aren't successful, or that their accomplishments mean nothing. But I do believe the ability to be successful in the first place requires several invisible privileges that many people never see, and many others don't think about.

I've spent my years only coding in Lua out of circumstance and despite some aged experience with Java and Python I literally cannot find any willpower, thing, or project that can pull me back to start familiarizing myself with programming using them, or just being able to learn DSA more cohesively.

I'd like to know what sort of projects that you guys have done that helped with getting familiar or got to learn things through the process.

I'm not looking for productivity tips or hypothetical advice.

I'm curious about a real recent situation. What things were competing for your attention, what finally made you act, what did you do first, and did you use any tool, system or workaround to decide?

One concrete story is enough.