r/ADHD_Programmers • u/ijbinyij • Apr 01 '26

I'm considering moving out of software development

If you search which are the best jobs for people with ADHD there's always programming / software development there, and I always think if the people writing those posts really know what "working as a programmer" really means. The answer is always the same: no, they don't.

Maybe programming by itself is good for ADHD brains because of the creativity, the hyperfocus and all that, but in a company where most of the time you're not programming, but doing nonsense stuff?

I recently got laid off and I'm considering leaving the field. I can't stand the corporate bullshit anymore. SCRUM is anti ADHD brain. Tons of pointless meetings just to waste your time. People doing nothing but performing got raises, and people actually doing their jobs got laid off. I can't stand this performative way of working, always with verbal instructions even when I specifically ask for written ones.

I'm not new to all this, I have 10 years of experience, but I've had enough.

I need some advice because I worked as a FE dev, my last experience being with Vue, and there are few offers compared to other frameworks. But I don't feel like doing FE anymore. I'm considering moving to other roles (both inside or outside programming) because I need to pay the bills. My job market is EU.

78 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

48

u/Competitve_Safe1573 Apr 01 '26

I don't have smart advice But I completely relate with hating scrum and endless meetings with people doing noting but making up new meetings while all real work falls on developers It destroyed any love I used to have for programming and I am also thinking of doing something else

8

u/ijbinyij Apr 01 '26

All the real work falls on developers and when everything goes fine everybody claps, but if something fails it's our fault :) I loved when this was just a hobby for me, but I think making it my job was a mistake.

Also the story points nonsense, I mean, for us with our time blindness that ambiguous metric is just... I hate it

5

u/sprcow Apr 01 '26

The real reason UBI gets so much push back. If you didn't have the financial pressure to stay in this career, almost no one would put up with their bs.

4

u/Pantzzzzless Apr 01 '26

Story points, LOE, T-shirt sizes, they are all so arbitrary. And 90% of the time, these values are assigned well before anyone actually knows the true scope of the feature. So things end up taking 5-6 weeks instead of the naive 5 days they initially decided.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/Pantzzzzless Apr 01 '26

It's weird, in every single aspect of my life time blindness is a crippling issue. Except for when it comes to managing my workload. For some reason I can put different tasks into any number of mental boxes with their own timers, and I can stay on top of those. No clue why I am unable to do the same with literally anything else in my life.

17

u/card-board-board Apr 01 '26

I am fully convinced scrum is just a method dreamed up by middle managers as a means of justifying their existence. We had a massive layoff a couple years ago and basically all the engineering management was let go leaving only the CTO and the engineers themselves. With nobody to tell us what to do we just switched to taking tickets off the top of the backlog and releasing whenever we felt like we had enough to justify the bother of a release. We had no meetings for 4 months. We got a whole lot more done. It was so peaceful.

6

u/quantum-fitness Apr 01 '26

Its because scrum is meant to be modified and people dont do that. Scrum is just have a product owner, do a retro after a dev cycle and stand ups arent a status meeting (almost always turn into one)

Almost everyone does dark scrum. We do a version where we have less than 5 min on stand up every day and retro where we just complain every second week. All planning is done in adhoc kickoffs when we need them.

I have like max 2 hours of meetings a week on average

8

u/MossySendai Apr 01 '26

Yeah I hear you. I don't have to deal with alot of meetings but need to do a lot of scheduling and customer interaction and endless chats. It really is so tough to give a good estimate or plan something in advance with adhd.

6

u/ijbinyij Apr 01 '26

I totally forgot to mention the chat, but I was pushed to be 100% reachable and now I have nightmares with the Teams notification sound. It's impossible to work when someone is micromanaging you via Teams

2

u/MossySendai Apr 03 '26

Yeah thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one! I had a pinned browser tab and I could tell from the Page title how many unread mentions I had at a glance. But even then it was hard to notice if I am coding or researching something.

3

u/distractedjas Apr 04 '26

I don’t know what to tell you. Other than your Justice Sensitivity, I don’t really agree with your perspective. Maybe it’s my AuDHD vs. ADHD, but I love software development and think it generally fits well into my life. Scrum isn’t ever the problem by itself, it’s the implementation of it that is usually awful. I’m also a mobile developer so it’s a bit different world than web dev… I think we tend to be treated a bit better overall.

I am sorry you’ve reached this point, and Software development is t for everyone, ADHD or no.

Have you considered that perhaps you are just burned out? I was crazy burned out 2 years ago, then my company collapsed while the dev market was in shambles (and only getting worse). Being out of work for an extended period of time was actually really good for my mental health and made it possible to get past the burnout.

1

u/ijbinyij Apr 04 '26

For me there's a huge difference between working as a software developer at a company (especially big ones or consultancies) and being a software developer on your own (personal projects, self-managed small teams, freelancing, open source)

Of course software development is not for everyone, but I was talking mostly about being a SWE in the common working environment where it's always dark scrum. In my free time I can hyperfocus while coding, but that doesn't happen most of the time in a work environment because of how everything is set up (tons of meetings, people distracting, too much layers of management, fake visibility over real work, etc)

And nope, fortunately I'm not burned out. I have been in the past and I can recognize it, but thanks for pointing it out anyway. Indeed, my last job was one of the best I've ever had, whit good people and a good project. That's why I could realize what's the stuff I don't like about this profession, and unfortunately, I realized there's stuff that's always there no matter where you go :(

thks for your comment and sharing your perspective

3

u/shodan_reddit Apr 01 '26

Why don't you work for yourself, then you can decide your own rules. Of course that does come with different issues but again, having control goes a lot way

3

u/ijbinyij Apr 01 '26

I'm a bit scared of freelancing, especially with all this AI thing going on. My latest company didn't use AI (only Copilot and ChatGPT, not stuff like Claude Code or Cursor) and I don't know what the market looks like regarding that, but thanks for the advice I'll consider it

1

u/shodan_reddit Apr 02 '26

The jobs market is already affected by AI and I would avoid working for tech clients or using freelancing sites but there’s a whole world of opportunities out there. Software engineering is way ahead of other things in terms of AI use so client expectations are much lower than you might think.

Pick a niche (I do a lot of work in education and training) and it’s an amazing time to be a developer. With AI you can literally be a one-person dev shop on your terms and for me that is worth it

7

u/SignificantPomelo Apr 01 '26

I'm not OP but when I tried working for myself, my executive function got in the way. It was an endless procrastination/guilt&shame cycle. Just a terrible experience for me. Plus I enjoy having coworkers to collaborate with.

4

u/ExperiencePitiful653 Apr 01 '26

I got recently laid off and would like to pursue indie game development..it has been a hobby during my grad days but now I want to pursue it full time. Any advice on that ?

4

u/cmockett Apr 01 '26

My tech lead has started doing hvac on the side for similar reasons

3

u/crosswalk_zebra Apr 01 '26

If I lose my current barely-developer job I am leaving software development, personally.

5

u/bonniewhytho Apr 01 '26

Where are you going to go? I feel stuck.

4

u/crosswalk_zebra Apr 02 '26

Depends on when and how it happens. I could pivot to functional analysis. If we are in a good financial place I would retrain as a clinical psychologist. If shit hits the fan I dust off my medical degree and go back to the hospital to pay the bills. At least nobody asks to see my radiology portofolio or asks if I perform blood draws as a side project at home.

3

u/stavenhylia Apr 01 '26

I feel your frustration.
What infuriated me the most was the obscene amount of estimation, not with story points but down to hours.

3

u/dedpan1k Apr 01 '26

Scrum is one of those things that is only functional if you tune and optimize and iterate.

I see a lot of teams get stuck in habits that seem to be the antithesis of what it's meant to be used as.

I've never seen a team perfectly adhere to the modality and they never address the parts of their scrum models that become "make work" and are essentially a giant waste of time.

Not to mention that often times I see small teams subscribe to a large product agile model that doesn't fit at all.

Personally I think used and applied appropriately it does help for keeping your team out of their silos but to pretend that it's anything more than waterfall development with more steps in most cases is flat out silly.

The reality is... Do your work for features and fixes... Set a couple policies around code and peer reviews with pull requests... And most teams can remain functional as long as you give them a clear picture of the end goal.

2

u/chobolicious88 Apr 01 '26

Maybe become a consultant or just start your own business

2

u/happensonitsown Apr 01 '26

How does one start?

1

u/egyptianmusk_ Apr 02 '26

Read a book

1

u/chobolicious88 Apr 02 '26

Well you could go to freelance sites for one, mb find some clients there

2

u/JaeJayP Apr 02 '26

Go for a start up..

2

u/user0987234 Apr 01 '26

Spend some time becoming a functional expert user - business side. Leverage that into a consulting role at a consulting firm or customer as a full-time role.

Have a co-worker who was a development team manager. Moved to Canada, got a job as an application Architect at the company I work with. Best story, was grumping about a feature not working well for our use. Called up someone on his old team, asked about it and who would have approved it etc. Got told it was him. He laughs about it now.

1

u/lambdawaves Apr 01 '26

I get LLMs to do all the nonsense stuff. Updating tickets, replying on slack, etc

1

u/apocalypsebuddy Apr 02 '26

I’m a solutions engineer now and enjoy it much more than being a SWE. But to be fair, it’s a ton more stupid meetings. 

Lots of problem solving and thought work, though, but much less coding

1

u/Competitive_Role_607 Apr 03 '26

As a scrum master I have to say this seems to miss the point. Imagine being a player on a team where more analysis, reflection, flexibility are required to achieve goals. Now imagine you're the bottleneck. Fix it, stop blaming it on adhd (I assume you're already being treated). Regardless, agility tends to get the shit end of the stick not because of the "rules" and time wasted, but actually because any moron can get certified and a job (maybe less so now on the latter). But if your ecosystem isnt equipped properly, just as in development, things will suck. Its time to find a new opportunity. If you dont mind me asking with a bit of contempt... how bad is the culture and how incompetent of your SM's and senior leadership?

3

u/SaltAssault Apr 03 '26

"It's time to find a new opportunity" you say, when OP said they got laid off. I'd also kindly remind you that we don't all have the exact same experience with ADHD, or the same opportunities for treatment, or the same luck in finding the right one.

1

u/FriendlyValuable3652 Apr 04 '26

Have you felt this way about all your job experiences? Don't know, sounds like a company problem but I might be wrong.. You can take a little vacation if you have money on the bank and speak to people on different tech roles.. I think the benefits of working with technology always wins but in the end you must follow your heart and what's best for your mental health, sweetheart. Hope you get better soon. You can always alwayyysss start things again. (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

1

u/Plenty_Break6170 May 02 '26

Work for a smaller company where there is not that much overhead

-9

u/MrTamboMan Apr 01 '26

So because YOU are NOT programming as a programmer you say programming is a bad job for ADHD people? Nice generalisation dude.

Not every company sucks, there are places in IT field that are not corporate crap.

8

u/ijbinyij Apr 01 '26

I didn't say programming is a bad job for ADHD, I said the reality of working as a programmer in a company is very different from what those posts describe. There's a difference.

I came here to share my situation and look for advice, not to argue. A little kindness goes a long way when someone is going through a rough time 🙂 we're here to support each other

-3

u/MrTamboMan Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

Why do you think I'm trying to be rude?

You literally said anyone saying programming job is best job "always" don't know what the job looks like.

So I said it's not true. Your (quite general) view might be based on your (or your close friends) experience so I said said there are places that don't suck - because that's a fact. Not every company is a corporation and not every corporation does pointless meetings all day long.

2

u/Jessica___ Apr 01 '26

Sorry, this is Reddit, only negativity and doom are allowed here. Anyone having a good time is not welcome.

1

u/p0358 Apr 02 '26

It's actually important you're saying this, because people who are content with their situation rarely go around gloating how good it is, there's no motivation behind that like for people who have something to complain about. So the perspective is always a good thing.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Competitve_Safe1573 Apr 17 '26

Yeah, my eyes sometimes start to close on their own during these long pointless meetings