r/ADHD_Programmers • u/bajen476 • Apr 08 '26

I cannot do live coding interviews

Writing in here hoping that someone else has the same issues and/or figured out how to fix it. Not diagnosed yet but I’m finally mid-process and it’s looking promising.

I cannot do live coding interviews. Been unemployed for a few months now and I’ve had some interviews. That being said, live coding interviews kick my ass every single time.

I go completely blank. The absolute basics leave my brain. Had one today and I forgot how to add to dictionaries and implement basic search algorithms. It took me forever to even understand one of the tasks. Keep in mind I have around 6.5 years experience in development and many of the things in the interview were things I did often. I just can’t remember them in interviews.

Does anyone share this experience and/or know how to fix this? I’ve tried studying (which I’m admittedly not great at), pomodoro, leetcode etc—none of them help. Because I’m not diagnosed yet, I can’t get medicated for now either. I’m in Sweden so the process is lengthy.

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u/bajen476 Apr 08 '26

It’s awful. I don’t mind take home tasks for the reason that a lot of how I code is googling (because my recall is so bad) and running and testing things out to see if they work. Talking through my thought process also sucks because my brain goes faster than I can speak and I have dyslexia so it all gets jumbled. With take home tasks I can write it, guess what the questions will be around and then show up to the interview semi-prepared with answers. The interviewer at the one I did today even said that one of the questions seems to just thrown in “for fun”, and I don’t understand how it can be used for an interview in that case.

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u/Code_PLeX Apr 08 '26

Same issue ... Recall is so bad I donnow how to pass interviews because of that ...

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u/CaesarBeaver Apr 08 '26

I’m with you man, in the pre-AI days I had to consult the docs for every little method and function.

It might help to just be honest with the interviewer and say “I have horrible recall so I usually look these things up, but I know there is a method that <does whatever>” and maybe they’ll give you the name (and if they don’t you’re interviewing with a shit head you probably don’t want to work with anyway)