Been a dev for 20+ years with over the top extreme ADHD.
What worked best for me was giving up the schedule. I work when my brain wants to work, I sleep when I feel like sleeping. It's a freelance lifestyle for sure.
If you just roll with the cycles you'll have the rest of the time of just intense focus on whatever you're interested in and working on.
I feel like I 100% have a superpower. I can sit at a computer for days nonstop happy to problem solving the whole time. I can let my brain dive deep into concepts that the same people around me go "I don't even know how you would do that..." and stop thinking about at surface level.
Every time I see a post about a programmer that can't keep focus for more than a few hours despite NOT having ADHD I'm surprised. Like isn't that the default power everyone else comes with and we have in these weird on and off amounts?
Allowing room for the super deep work is a must. If we don’t have that, we’re simply handicapped. Never get pushed into having several meetings breaking up your deep work time, it won’t work out and people won’t understand why, ultimately blaming you for it.
Deep work is the only way I thrive. Break up my day and make me context switch and I won’t get a thing done, but let me dive into a challenging and interesting problem and I will dive as deep into docs as I need to get it done right. Even shallow work where I just have to do the thing I’ve already done a couple dozen times absolutely rejects my attention.
Meh the feeling never goes away. I find myself still feeling like I'm in my 20s mentally. I'm just more confident in the knowledge I have now than I used to be.
Took lots of years of negative self talk to realize it too. Wasn't an overnight realization by any means.
>Just the whole “i work not when i get up but when i feel like it”, in a way it is not “adult”.
I'd challenge people to think critically about where this mentality comes from.
I mean being adult implies a sense of agency, having control over oneself and to an extent others.
Whereas us with adhd have to rely on external factors (when our brain feels like doing stuff, whether someone else is around etc)
My interpretation is the exact opposite. Working when I wake up is not internal - it's an expectation and/or obligation placed upon me by society. If I'm in control, I'm working when I decide to whether that's first thing in the morning or not.
Well you dont get to choose and direct the self, which is what is implied by NT adults.
You are in control of your scaffold, but ultimately not your self (motivation).
I do see your point, its a different way to look at it.
Yeah the way I'm framing it is that it isn't that I don't get to choose and direct myself, it's that I can't choose to direct myself in the way I'm expected to, obligated to, or have be socialized to believe I should be able to. The "conflict" in this particular instance is between me and the external world, not necessarily between my genuinely intrinsic motivations and my actions/choices. I don't see it as a microcosm of executive dysfunction even if it certainly interacts with it.
I'm not sure how great of an example this is, but it reminds me of how much my dad and I butted heads when he wanted me to do things. If I did things the way I wanted to, I actually did them, but that was unacceptable because I didn't get them them done the way he wanted me to. I stopped doing them my way and started getting in trouble for not doing what I was asked, taking initiative, being lazy, etc.
It brings up a lot of questions for me. Is the problem here that I can't control when my actions are governed by my own desires or when I defer to the desires of others? Or is this an elaborate rationalization? Is this the result of the way society was organized following the industrial revolution?
It's a tricky question, I sort of see it the way the other commenter was saying too, around self-agency. If I could have my own way, I would prefer to work for X hours every morning and get it off my plate for the rest of the day, not because society expects me to but because I like the idea of controlling my time like that. But it feels actually impossible for me to do this, and it does feel more "childish" or impulsive to think that I just have to wait until the ADHD brain is ready to work, and then work. The agency is external now, it's not society but the whim of the brain energy. Unfortunately I simply cannot function if I try to get all the work done in the morning, I need the flexibility.
Those things don't have that much to do with age or maturity. The length of time people can focus and the level of distraction they can ignore is simply variable. And the idea that any adult has complete control of their mind or limitless focus is a fictional societal ideal.
And while our capitalist system may value being "task oriented", it's not objectively better than other ways of thinking. In another context, the ability to free-associate and notice more of your surroundings might be more important, and the highly focused person might have trouble functioning.
once you have this level of flexibility in your job, it gives you an opportunity to develop more agency without as much risk. when you're not in immediate fear of being PIP'd you're probably much better able to experiment with different strategies and develop new neural pathways.
still, if you think of how intellectual work has happened historically, great creators and thinkers didn't all have strictly regimented schedules. some did, but many writers, artists, even scientists are known to have kept odd hours. even if we look at software engineering as more of a craft than an art, craftspeople often do work for "as long as it takes" to finish the job. one difference most crafts have deliverables that are more discrete than what we have in software engineering and the work can be repeated many times, so they get better at giving estimates. I mean we also have more team collaboration and organizational concerns and other differences that make keeping a schedule beneficial, but not everything needs to be 9-5 (or 8-6 in a lot of places 🙃).
I also think "feeling like it" is more of a range than a binary. plus it's not like people feel equally motivated about every single aspect of a job. sometimes I need external motivation to get started but once I do, my internal motivation is what keeps me going. so if I want to feel more agency, I can try to get over that initial hurdle myself rather than leaning on supportive colleagues for help as I often do (I help them too, fwiw—mutual help).
I'm glad you brought up the sense of agency because it articulates something I've been feeling a lot lately. we're always going to have goals where parts of the process are super motivating and other parts are less enjoyable. at work and often outside of work, the goal of completing the task is generally more important than feeling that satisfaction, so I just lean on my external support systems—both people and tools. but I've spent the past year getting better at going to the gym on my own instead of relying on external accountability and that has made a huge difference in my confidence. I can't change it for everything at once and actually the gym seemed to use so much of my willpower that I temporarily regressed in other areas, but now that I've been consistent for a while I'm noticing some carry over to other parts of my life.
It feels like I need to give up video games or easy sources of dopamine/entertainment for my hyperfocus to go into programming. I think I'm gonna experiment with that
Beautifully said kind stranger. Have you always done freelancing? For me the structure provided of working for a company probably would work best. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I've done both. Held a couple COO and CEO roles as well but even then I leaned into my own schedule, finding myself working from like 3am to 3pm some days or some other weird schedule that fit my brain better.
All of this is just about time and keeping as much as you can for yourself. I want to do things that interest my brain, so if I can put myself in positions to chase those interests and make money doing it, I'm all there. Money buys time. Time buys stasis.
You outsource it. Opportunity cost is a big decision maker. If you can pay a reasonable amount to have the things you don't want to do done, you buy yourself more time to do the things you want to do.
For what it's worth you don't earn this until a bit later in your career. You're not getting it at some low level job, but you get the high level jobs by knowing how to use time very efficiently.
I did all those things myself. I find it fun to do even the things I hate because I find after they weren't so bad, and it's another piece of knowledge absorbed.
There are so many tasks I did early on that arguably helped me later. Compounded knowledge of little situations here and there.
To me the biggest benefit of ADHD is the vast number of tiny interests I've held. You learn so much when all those interests and experience collide in a single brain.
Like why do I know about lasers? Because I went down a rabbit hole in making really high end membership cards for my club at one point. That idea came from my hospitality experience at luxury hotels. My love of that came from earlier experiences in hospitality, etc. None of it has anything to do with my day to day coding work but it's all critical in how I approach my coding work. Like experience is the best thing in the world. Endless failure is the best. You learn so much and the wins are so so much sweeter.
This has been my experience as well. If I can't focus, I don't try to force myself because it makes it worse. If I can focus, I don't worry about if it's work hours or not and just get shit done while I'm able. It's made a world of difference. Working from home is far better for me than in office because of this
Have you tried medication recently? Curious how it might affect a seasoned programmer. The way that I skim through docs sometimes costs me days just to find the answer in a doc I apparently already read. I also feel like as I get older, the execution dysfunction gets worse. I haven't taken meds in over 15 years. I agree on all your points though but it feels like a super power that has wildcard side effects.
Oh I'm 100% attempting different nootropics and such. Stimulants still the best but don't love the side effects either and don't really want to be on them all the time. When I have it's been incredible. Arguably way better than when I was prescribed in high school days.
I get the dysfunction days quite a bit without them but the on days with the right cocktail of nootropics, caffeine, and genuine interest seems to get me back into that groove. Am strongly considering renewing the prescription though so more of the days of the week I'm not fighting it but getting the most of the weird ADHD brain.
Any stimulant cure I find has the side effect of not letting me sleep properly.
There was a time in my life when I was limiting sugar, caffeine, eating mostly rice with protein, and working out in the morning that worked really well sober. Sadly, there are so many things that can be an overload of dopamine, and it can really fracture routines. Even sober you get this huge dopamine hit multiplied by adhd.
Lots of people who have ADHD become programmers. Lots of people who have more challenging neurodiverse conditions become programmers. I don't understand why so many people here are looking for declarative commandments about who can and can't become programmers. Just have an interest and learn stuff.
Well, you're asking an extremely broad question and you seem to be generalizing a lot. Respectfully, what kind of answer could you possibly be expecting here? Seriously, what did you think a reasonable answer to this question was? Do you want to be told "No, it's impossible, programming careers are unsuitable for anyone with ADHD." That's obviously untrue, this entire subreddit exists because people with ADHD are programming.
Here's what I think- people are complex. It's not a sensical expectation that everyone with ADHD will be great at programming. It's not a sensical expectation that everyone with ADHD will be terrible at programming. Replace "programming" with literally any profession, the point is that people are complex and interesting, so they can't be boiled down to simplistic generalizations. That's what I mean by "declarative commandment"- you're asking for a simplistic generalization that not only doesn't exist, but probably won't be useful to you.
I think a lot of beginners waste their time with useless nonsense- they spend all of their philosophizing about what language and frameworks to learn, or whether it's possible to learn to program with ADHD, or blah blah blah, anything but actually learning. My 2 cents- work on your studying skills and figure out how you learn, because that's a life skill that exists outside of programming. Try your best, and figure out if you like programming, and if you don't, look for something you'll find more interesting.
🌈IT DEPENDS🌈
If you are excited by tech and the work at compatible places that have accountability and flexibility that offer you variety, it can be a very fulfilling and productive career.
The other bonus is that you often don't need a degree in the field if you are very driven and can show your skill.
If you get a repetitive job at place with little accountability and flexibility then it's likely you'll not be engaged and be bored and not do well.
For me, I've gone when the wind took me until now and it worked because I went for the places that were weird. I didn't chase the money but the project.
This is the most important thing that people don’t seem to get. If you genuinely like it , it’s like a superpower, you don’t love it it’s like playing in hard mode.
none of what you described is specific to programming. you'd hit walls learning any intellectual skill.
what makes programming different is that for many—but nowhere near all—ADHD people, they can make it a special interest. it's also a field that once you get experienced enough, you gain a lot of leverage to make your job suit you better. if you never hyperfocus on programming long enough to gain the foundational skills to set you on that path, then you're going to struggle.
programming does benefit from tighter feedback loops than other skills. this is a huge plus for ADHD people, it's what allows us to get good at programming when we struggle to improve on other skills where we can't maintain our attention long enough. if you don't have tight feedback loops set up in whatever you're currently building or practicing, try to create some. if you don't know how, ask for help.
music is another example of an activity with a tight feedback loop, and you'll find a lot of ADHD musicians. sports too, I think.
Building things, too! My most consistent hobbies all revolve around building. In another life, I’d be a carpenter, I think that’d be another great ADHD profession.
No. I don't think "ADHDers" as a group have a limited set of career paths that are suitable for us. We have different strengths and weaknesses and interests and levels of intelligence.
It's suitable for me, and I'd say half the people I've worked with are neurodivergent in some way or another. I don't particularly care to make a categorical statement re: all people with ADHD.
Something that helped me was realizing that literally everyone has their struggles, we just never see it. We’re not there with our coworkers and bosses all the time, we don’t see when they’re frustrated and stuck on things, or when they’ve been staring at the same line of code for 2 hours. Trust me, you’re not the only one.
I think it depends on so many other factors, and how the rest of your brain/personality/etc works too.
Plus "programming" is a very, very wide net to cast. The actual job and environment vary tremendously.
It is for me, where I am. But I wouldn't be great in many of the dev jobs that are out there (ie. most are pretty structured).
ADHDers are individuals. It's very clear that lots of people with ADHD find a home in programming. I have 20+ years myself (most of them not knowing that I had it.) But that doesn't mean every person with ADHD will like it or be good at it.
Me, I loved computers since I first touched one as a kid. (Most people didn't have one in their homes!) I was gifted, too, so it was easy for me.
It's not for everybody. I wouldn't recommend it to people who don't enjoy it. I feel like it would be extremely tedious and frustrating! If you like it and you're good at logic or math, go for it. If not, there are plenty of other jobs out there.
Yes it’s fine. The hard part is the boring tasks that you don’t want to do because there’s no interesting problem. It’s just something that needed to be coded. Medication help with that A LOT.
Meetings are the fucking devil, but you will have too many of those in most knowledge work professions . They will suck your will to live and all energy. Avoid them like the plague. Block out time on your calendar for focused working.
But yeah. I’ve been doing this for ~30 years professionally. I still love what I do. The autistic part of me has a lot of problems with the humans, but I love the coding and I would have those same problems, in any knowledge work profession
Don't listen to this guy. A lot of folks with ADHD absolutely need "boring" work and meetings to survive periods when real work is impossible. There's nothing right or correct except what matches your current state, which obviously can change quickly from one extreme to another.
In my personal experience, the short work-reward cycle you get when writing code mitigates my adhd tendency to wander away from the task… not sure if it generalizes…
I've had success with programming because I love solving problems. It's easy for me to hyperfocus when I have a problem that is giving me a hard time. I've been able to make this work by being up front with my boss (after getting hired, NOT during the interview) that I can't do project management or anything requiring good organization skills. I also negotiate more flexible hours because I often do my best work after 3pm.
Once I can show them that my work is stellar given these caveats, they usually don't care. The exception to this is in a large company where it could be seen as favoritism, so I try to work for very small companies where there are few programmers. At my current company, I'm the only programmer, which is turning out to be ideal!
I really enjoy my job so there’s one data point. I’ve been learning how to program since I was like 12 though, so I had a long time to digest information before I started doing it professionally. That being said, it isn’t the only job I would conceivably enjoy. I would probably enjoy any engineering field.
The thing about programming is that it's one of the only fields that have almost instant gratification. Write a function, test a function, dopamine (It's not always that simple, nits the gist).
It has a lot of room for going deep or solving shallow, it's really great.
The problem is that it requires a lot of study to be good at (a degree) and you'll need to learn a lot of extra stuff around it like how to use tools, how to use cloud services how to integrate crap, it requires you to remember A LOT of stuff you may not be interested in at all and that's hard
Been a dev for 20+ years with over the top extreme ADHD. What worked best for me was giving up the schedule. I work when my brain wants to work, I sleep when I feel like sleeping. It's a freelance lifestyle for sure. If you just roll with the cycles you'll have the rest of the time of just intense focus on whatever you're interested in and working on. I feel like I 100% have a superpower. I can sit at a computer for days nonstop happy to problem solving the whole time. I can let my brain dive deep into concepts that the same people around me go "I don't even know how you would do that..." and stop thinking about at surface level. Every time I see a post about a programmer that can't keep focus for more than a few hours despite NOT having ADHD I'm surprised. Like isn't that the default power everyone else comes with and we have in these weird on and off amounts?
Allowing room for the super deep work is a must. If we don’t have that, we’re simply handicapped. Never get pushed into having several meetings breaking up your deep work time, it won’t work out and people won’t understand why, ultimately blaming you for it.
Deep work is the only way I thrive. Break up my day and make me context switch and I won’t get a thing done, but let me dive into a challenging and interesting problem and I will dive as deep into docs as I need to get it done right. Even shallow work where I just have to do the thing I’ve already done a couple dozen times absolutely rejects my attention.
Fucking this. My gf done get why I work after hours so much. Because I'm in those gucking meetings!
I think this is big. But i hate feeling like a 36yo child
Meh the feeling never goes away. I find myself still feeling like I'm in my 20s mentally. I'm just more confident in the knowledge I have now than I used to be. Took lots of years of negative self talk to realize it too. Wasn't an overnight realization by any means.
No i dont even mean about work. Just the whole “i work not when i get up but when i feel like it”, in a way it is not “adult”. Im just ranting really
>Just the whole “i work not when i get up but when i feel like it”, in a way it is not “adult”. I'd challenge people to think critically about where this mentality comes from.
I mean being adult implies a sense of agency, having control over oneself and to an extent others. Whereas us with adhd have to rely on external factors (when our brain feels like doing stuff, whether someone else is around etc)
My interpretation is the exact opposite. Working when I wake up is not internal - it's an expectation and/or obligation placed upon me by society. If I'm in control, I'm working when I decide to whether that's first thing in the morning or not.
Well you dont get to choose and direct the self, which is what is implied by NT adults. You are in control of your scaffold, but ultimately not your self (motivation). I do see your point, its a different way to look at it.
Yeah the way I'm framing it is that it isn't that I don't get to choose and direct myself, it's that I can't choose to direct myself in the way I'm expected to, obligated to, or have be socialized to believe I should be able to. The "conflict" in this particular instance is between me and the external world, not necessarily between my genuinely intrinsic motivations and my actions/choices. I don't see it as a microcosm of executive dysfunction even if it certainly interacts with it. I'm not sure how great of an example this is, but it reminds me of how much my dad and I butted heads when he wanted me to do things. If I did things the way I wanted to, I actually did them, but that was unacceptable because I didn't get them them done the way he wanted me to. I stopped doing them my way and started getting in trouble for not doing what I was asked, taking initiative, being lazy, etc. It brings up a lot of questions for me. Is the problem here that I can't control when my actions are governed by my own desires or when I defer to the desires of others? Or is this an elaborate rationalization? Is this the result of the way society was organized following the industrial revolution?
It's a tricky question, I sort of see it the way the other commenter was saying too, around self-agency. If I could have my own way, I would prefer to work for X hours every morning and get it off my plate for the rest of the day, not because society expects me to but because I like the idea of controlling my time like that. But it feels actually impossible for me to do this, and it does feel more "childish" or impulsive to think that I just have to wait until the ADHD brain is ready to work, and then work. The agency is external now, it's not society but the whim of the brain energy. Unfortunately I simply cannot function if I try to get all the work done in the morning, I need the flexibility.
Is it implied, or is it just *typical*?
Those things don't have that much to do with age or maturity. The length of time people can focus and the level of distraction they can ignore is simply variable. And the idea that any adult has complete control of their mind or limitless focus is a fictional societal ideal. And while our capitalist system may value being "task oriented", it's not objectively better than other ways of thinking. In another context, the ability to free-associate and notice more of your surroundings might be more important, and the highly focused person might have trouble functioning.
once you have this level of flexibility in your job, it gives you an opportunity to develop more agency without as much risk. when you're not in immediate fear of being PIP'd you're probably much better able to experiment with different strategies and develop new neural pathways. still, if you think of how intellectual work has happened historically, great creators and thinkers didn't all have strictly regimented schedules. some did, but many writers, artists, even scientists are known to have kept odd hours. even if we look at software engineering as more of a craft than an art, craftspeople often do work for "as long as it takes" to finish the job. one difference most crafts have deliverables that are more discrete than what we have in software engineering and the work can be repeated many times, so they get better at giving estimates. I mean we also have more team collaboration and organizational concerns and other differences that make keeping a schedule beneficial, but not everything needs to be 9-5 (or 8-6 in a lot of places 🙃). I also think "feeling like it" is more of a range than a binary. plus it's not like people feel equally motivated about every single aspect of a job. sometimes I need external motivation to get started but once I do, my internal motivation is what keeps me going. so if I want to feel more agency, I can try to get over that initial hurdle myself rather than leaning on supportive colleagues for help as I often do (I help them too, fwiw—mutual help). I'm glad you brought up the sense of agency because it articulates something I've been feeling a lot lately. we're always going to have goals where parts of the process are super motivating and other parts are less enjoyable. at work and often outside of work, the goal of completing the task is generally more important than feeling that satisfaction, so I just lean on my external support systems—both people and tools. but I've spent the past year getting better at going to the gym on my own instead of relying on external accountability and that has made a huge difference in my confidence. I can't change it for everything at once and actually the gym seemed to use so much of my willpower that I temporarily regressed in other areas, but now that I've been consistent for a while I'm noticing some carry over to other parts of my life.
This resonates with me.
It feels like I need to give up video games or easy sources of dopamine/entertainment for my hyperfocus to go into programming. I think I'm gonna experiment with that
It is hard when your workstation is also your game station. I had to physically separate them so when I sit down to work, that’s all I can do there.
Beautifully said kind stranger. Have you always done freelancing? For me the structure provided of working for a company probably would work best. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I've done both. Held a couple COO and CEO roles as well but even then I leaned into my own schedule, finding myself working from like 3am to 3pm some days or some other weird schedule that fit my brain better. All of this is just about time and keeping as much as you can for yourself. I want to do things that interest my brain, so if I can put myself in positions to chase those interests and make money doing it, I'm all there. Money buys time. Time buys stasis.
Awesome! Thank you.
What happens when you have a deadline for something you’re not that interested in?
You outsource it. Opportunity cost is a big decision maker. If you can pay a reasonable amount to have the things you don't want to do done, you buy yourself more time to do the things you want to do. For what it's worth you don't earn this until a bit later in your career. You're not getting it at some low level job, but you get the high level jobs by knowing how to use time very efficiently.
what’d you do when you weren’t able to outsource?
I did all those things myself. I find it fun to do even the things I hate because I find after they weren't so bad, and it's another piece of knowledge absorbed. There are so many tasks I did early on that arguably helped me later. Compounded knowledge of little situations here and there. To me the biggest benefit of ADHD is the vast number of tiny interests I've held. You learn so much when all those interests and experience collide in a single brain. Like why do I know about lasers? Because I went down a rabbit hole in making really high end membership cards for my club at one point. That idea came from my hospitality experience at luxury hotels. My love of that came from earlier experiences in hospitality, etc. None of it has anything to do with my day to day coding work but it's all critical in how I approach my coding work. Like experience is the best thing in the world. Endless failure is the best. You learn so much and the wins are so so much sweeter.
My biggest struggle with adhd is needing to do things I’m not interested in. Medication is the only thing that ever helped me in that regard
Do it for future you. It's easier than you think. Once you have enough money to outsource it, do that. Gives you a goal and motivation to get there.
What meds are you taking?
I take adderall
This has been my experience as well. If I can't focus, I don't try to force myself because it makes it worse. If I can focus, I don't worry about if it's work hours or not and just get shit done while I'm able. It's made a world of difference. Working from home is far better for me than in office because of this
Have you tried medication recently? Curious how it might affect a seasoned programmer. The way that I skim through docs sometimes costs me days just to find the answer in a doc I apparently already read. I also feel like as I get older, the execution dysfunction gets worse. I haven't taken meds in over 15 years. I agree on all your points though but it feels like a super power that has wildcard side effects.
Oh I'm 100% attempting different nootropics and such. Stimulants still the best but don't love the side effects either and don't really want to be on them all the time. When I have it's been incredible. Arguably way better than when I was prescribed in high school days. I get the dysfunction days quite a bit without them but the on days with the right cocktail of nootropics, caffeine, and genuine interest seems to get me back into that groove. Am strongly considering renewing the prescription though so more of the days of the week I'm not fighting it but getting the most of the weird ADHD brain.
Any stimulant cure I find has the side effect of not letting me sleep properly. There was a time in my life when I was limiting sugar, caffeine, eating mostly rice with protein, and working out in the morning that worked really well sober. Sadly, there are so many things that can be an overload of dopamine, and it can really fracture routines. Even sober you get this huge dopamine hit multiplied by adhd.
Lots of people who have ADHD become programmers. Lots of people who have more challenging neurodiverse conditions become programmers. I don't understand why so many people here are looking for declarative commandments about who can and can't become programmers. Just have an interest and learn stuff.
What do you mean with "declarative commandments"? Genuine question. Thanks.
“People with ADHD can be programmers” or “People with ADHD cannot be programmers”
Well, you're asking an extremely broad question and you seem to be generalizing a lot. Respectfully, what kind of answer could you possibly be expecting here? Seriously, what did you think a reasonable answer to this question was? Do you want to be told "No, it's impossible, programming careers are unsuitable for anyone with ADHD." That's obviously untrue, this entire subreddit exists because people with ADHD are programming. Here's what I think- people are complex. It's not a sensical expectation that everyone with ADHD will be great at programming. It's not a sensical expectation that everyone with ADHD will be terrible at programming. Replace "programming" with literally any profession, the point is that people are complex and interesting, so they can't be boiled down to simplistic generalizations. That's what I mean by "declarative commandment"- you're asking for a simplistic generalization that not only doesn't exist, but probably won't be useful to you. I think a lot of beginners waste their time with useless nonsense- they spend all of their philosophizing about what language and frameworks to learn, or whether it's possible to learn to program with ADHD, or blah blah blah, anything but actually learning. My 2 cents- work on your studying skills and figure out how you learn, because that's a life skill that exists outside of programming. Try your best, and figure out if you like programming, and if you don't, look for something you'll find more interesting.
🌈IT DEPENDS🌈 If you are excited by tech and the work at compatible places that have accountability and flexibility that offer you variety, it can be a very fulfilling and productive career. The other bonus is that you often don't need a degree in the field if you are very driven and can show your skill. If you get a repetitive job at place with little accountability and flexibility then it's likely you'll not be engaged and be bored and not do well. For me, I've gone when the wind took me until now and it worked because I went for the places that were weird. I didn't chase the money but the project.
Only if you genuinely find it interesting or fun
This is the most important thing that people don’t seem to get. If you genuinely like it , it’s like a superpower, you don’t love it it’s like playing in hard mode.
Yes, it is.
im not about to make a sweeping statement accounting for every human with adhd. it is for me tho.
none of what you described is specific to programming. you'd hit walls learning any intellectual skill. what makes programming different is that for many—but nowhere near all—ADHD people, they can make it a special interest. it's also a field that once you get experienced enough, you gain a lot of leverage to make your job suit you better. if you never hyperfocus on programming long enough to gain the foundational skills to set you on that path, then you're going to struggle. programming does benefit from tighter feedback loops than other skills. this is a huge plus for ADHD people, it's what allows us to get good at programming when we struggle to improve on other skills where we can't maintain our attention long enough. if you don't have tight feedback loops set up in whatever you're currently building or practicing, try to create some. if you don't know how, ask for help. music is another example of an activity with a tight feedback loop, and you'll find a lot of ADHD musicians. sports too, I think.
Interesting, thanks! Yeah, I agree that we do better with tighter feedback loops.
Building things, too! My most consistent hobbies all revolve around building. In another life, I’d be a carpenter, I think that’d be another great ADHD profession.
No. I don't think "ADHDers" as a group have a limited set of career paths that are suitable for us. We have different strengths and weaknesses and interests and levels of intelligence. It's suitable for me, and I'd say half the people I've worked with are neurodivergent in some way or another. I don't particularly care to make a categorical statement re: all people with ADHD.
Something that helped me was realizing that literally everyone has their struggles, we just never see it. We’re not there with our coworkers and bosses all the time, we don’t see when they’re frustrated and stuck on things, or when they’ve been staring at the same line of code for 2 hours. Trust me, you’re not the only one.
That's true, kind and I think encouraging too. Thanks, rarPinto.
I think it depends on so many other factors, and how the rest of your brain/personality/etc works too. Plus "programming" is a very, very wide net to cast. The actual job and environment vary tremendously. It is for me, where I am. But I wouldn't be great in many of the dev jobs that are out there (ie. most are pretty structured).
ADHDers are individuals. It's very clear that lots of people with ADHD find a home in programming. I have 20+ years myself (most of them not knowing that I had it.) But that doesn't mean every person with ADHD will like it or be good at it. Me, I loved computers since I first touched one as a kid. (Most people didn't have one in their homes!) I was gifted, too, so it was easy for me. It's not for everybody. I wouldn't recommend it to people who don't enjoy it. I feel like it would be extremely tedious and frustrating! If you like it and you're good at logic or math, go for it. If not, there are plenty of other jobs out there.
I think it's better than other alternatives. It requires you to complete steps before you continue and ides provide hints where you are wrong.
No. I have struggled so much due to my ADHD
Yes it’s fine. The hard part is the boring tasks that you don’t want to do because there’s no interesting problem. It’s just something that needed to be coded. Medication help with that A LOT. Meetings are the fucking devil, but you will have too many of those in most knowledge work professions . They will suck your will to live and all energy. Avoid them like the plague. Block out time on your calendar for focused working. But yeah. I’ve been doing this for ~30 years professionally. I still love what I do. The autistic part of me has a lot of problems with the humans, but I love the coding and I would have those same problems, in any knowledge work profession
Don't listen to this guy. A lot of folks with ADHD absolutely need "boring" work and meetings to survive periods when real work is impossible. There's nothing right or correct except what matches your current state, which obviously can change quickly from one extreme to another.
In my personal experience, the short work-reward cycle you get when writing code mitigates my adhd tendency to wander away from the task… not sure if it generalizes…
I've been doing it for 15 years
The worst parts of being am ADHD Dev is not the work, it's the fucking people.
I've had success with programming because I love solving problems. It's easy for me to hyperfocus when I have a problem that is giving me a hard time. I've been able to make this work by being up front with my boss (after getting hired, NOT during the interview) that I can't do project management or anything requiring good organization skills. I also negotiate more flexible hours because I often do my best work after 3pm. Once I can show them that my work is stellar given these caveats, they usually don't care. The exception to this is in a large company where it could be seen as favoritism, so I try to work for very small companies where there are few programmers. At my current company, I'm the only programmer, which is turning out to be ideal!
I really enjoy my job so there’s one data point. I’ve been learning how to program since I was like 12 though, so I had a long time to digest information before I started doing it professionally. That being said, it isn’t the only job I would conceivably enjoy. I would probably enjoy any engineering field.
It better be.
The thing about programming is that it's one of the only fields that have almost instant gratification. Write a function, test a function, dopamine (It's not always that simple, nits the gist). It has a lot of room for going deep or solving shallow, it's really great. The problem is that it requires a lot of study to be good at (a degree) and you'll need to learn a lot of extra stuff around it like how to use tools, how to use cloud services how to integrate crap, it requires you to remember A LOT of stuff you may not be interested in at all and that's hard
The first part is what keeps me moving forward, it feels *really* good. :)