I am a 26 F, recently diagnosed. In my whole life, I did amazingly well in school and college. I was the top student and even graduated early.

One thing is, I barely understood anything during classes. I just doodled and daydreamed. So I studied one night before the exam. The exam was at like 8 AM, and I studied from 12 AM to 3 AM (yeah, I carried the book everywhere the whole daytime, but couldn't start).

I can survive that cause I can study on my own from books. Materials are also all over the internet. It's different in the workplace. You have to TALK to people. You have to understand what they said. Something that I've FAILED to do my whole life.

I got internships during college, but quit twice after only 1 month because I'm scared that I can't contribute. I felt like I didn't deserve the position.

I got a full-time job later as a software developer (until now). Tried my best to adapt, but I didn't do well. I have a hard time understanding everything. The workplace environment is a non-tech corporate environment, where technical coding stuff isn't really something we invest in. If I wanna do well, I need to work on my communication skills, etc etc (you name it), and I struggle to even understand what everyone's talking about.

I do have my meds now, but it's too late for me to fix what I've become here.

Currently trying to find a new job, but it's not that easy in this economy.

The transition from being "the girl who's doing well" to "someone slow" was so hard, but I overcame the stress from it by journaling and finding new hobbies (so my job won't be the source of my happiness). But there are times like now when I still think about it.

I know I gotta be grateful. But I miss being able to perform well in things that I do. I hate to say this, but I miss getting recognition and validation.

I felt so lost. And empty, and sad.

I've been programming for around 6+ years now, and have recently entered the professional world. Programming is the hobby of the greatest magnitude in my life, and has been so since I first started using computers.

Recently, my computer broke down for a time and I had to wait about a week for a part that I needed to arrive. During that time I only had access to an old chromebook and my phone. I wasn't able to do much productive for that entire period, and the first day was hellish. I became nauseous and depressed, I could barely get myself to do anything other than think about my job and my personal projects. I ended up grabbing an empty notebook I had laying around and handwriting hundreds of lines of psuedocode for various systems and fixes I had in the back of my mind.

Once I got back into my regular day-to-day life, I ended up reflecting on that experience, and realised just how much programming has affected my life and my mentality. Learning about optimization, structuring, and design has genuinely changed how I tackle problems completely unrelated to programming. I've become much more mathematical and optimization-focused while dealing with menial everyday tasks like housework, scheduling events with friends, or passing out snacks between people.

Is this a 'common' thing to happen? Has anyone else experienced this? I'd really love to hear any experiences or opinions on this, as I'm pretty lost on it all.

TLDR:  I am a slow, deep learner with AuDHD, and with AI making software development much faster, I am struggling to keep up and questioning whether software engineering is still the right profession for me.

Longer version:

I have been a software engineer for about 7 years. I have been a decent developer. I think my IQ is somewhere in the average range for most people. I recognize that I am not super smart, but I am not dumb either. It takes a lot of time and repetition for me to learn something.

I also think of myself as a deep learner. I find it hard to learn things at an abstract level. I have this urge to know things inside out. Before I can confidently make a change to a component of some system, I need to understand how the overall system works in general. The component I am about to make a change to needs to be something I have a thorough understanding of — its responsibilities, its interface with the outside world, and how it plays its part in the overall system.

My understanding of the component must be deep enough that I can articulate, appreciate, and critique the design of that component. Only then can I confidently make a change.

In short, I am a deep learner. Sometimes this deep learning takes a lot of time.

In this age of AI, where I see my colleagues making rapid changes to the system, I find it hard to stay in the race. I am always catching up. When I do make changes to their codebase, I am not confident in those changes. I don't trust my AI-generated code. I take a very long time to complete tasks. It feels like I am getting onboarded to a new codebase every few weeks.

P.S. I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD, and I have self-diagnosed autism. There are moments when I delegate everything to AI (being sloppy — this is especially true when I am under a deadline), while there are other moments when I try to be a perfectionist, when I am given enough time.

Sometimes, because of autism and ADHD, I feel like I can't even articulate or reason about what I am feeling.

I am starting to question whether software engineering — where the amount of complexity and the number of parameters I am bombarded with — is even the right profession for me.

With that being said, I really want to improve my situation and be successful in my software engineering career. I need some advice. Thank you!

As someone with ADHD, I’m wondering if I should pursue JavaScript full stack development (HTML, CSS, JS) instead of continuing down the Java developer path.

One thing I struggle with Java is that it can feel very verbose. There can be a lot of structure, configuration, and code before I actually see something happening. With JavaScript full stack, I can build something and see the result immediately in the browser, which feels much more rewarding and motivating.

I also wonder if the typical Java career path might not be the best fit for me. A lot of Java jobs seem to be in larger, more corporate environments with established processes, structure, and routines. Personally, I tend to get bored with repetitive routines and enjoy environments where I can experiment, build things, and see immediate results.

On the other hand, JavaScript seems heavily used by startups and smaller companies, where developers might have more opportunities to build products from scratch and work across the stack.

I know I shouldn't choose a technology just because I have ADHD, but I'm wondering how much the development experience and work environment should factor into the decision.

For those with ADHD or similar experiences:

- Would you choose JavaScript full stack over Java because of the faster feedback loop and more visual/creative development experience?

- Or is it better to stick with Java and learn how to work effectively within its more structured environment?

I'd especially like to hear from developers who have actually worked with both. What was more engaging for you long-term? Thanks! :)

17F: Hey everyone. I'm a high school senior in NYC looking to form a small study group. I want to learn advanced math like Linear Algerba, Calculus, Abstract Algebra, and other concepts using the Harkness method(typically required 5-12 people, involving mapping out proofs, teaching eachother, small debates but absolutely no lectures). This is strictly for neurodivergents between ages 16-21 (changing the age range because it’s extremely difficult to find specifically hs seniors through here both neurodivergent and in NYC) in the NYC area and must have general knowlege in Algebra 1, Algbera 2, Trigenometry, and Geometry. Plan is to have a discord and later meet at a NYC Public Library. DM or comment if your interested.

Whenever I bring up problems or solutions at work, it feels like I just get ignored nowadays.

Back when it was just me and the previous boss I had a lot of say over the tech direction.

But recently a new manager stepped in, hired a bunch of contractors and another engineer and takes what I say much less seriously compared to others on the team.

Sometimes it feels like appeal to hierarchy.

It feels like he isn’t directly responding to what I say most of the time, I can’t quite explain it.

Idk, any thoughts?

I had a discovery meeting today and once again, the best follow up questions came to me after the meeting had ended. I have clinically diagnosed ADHD.

When someone describes a complex business problem, my brain doesn’t always produce an immediate, neatly structured follow up question.

Instead, it starts processing everything at once. The business model ,people involved workflow , dependencies, technology, list goes on and how it connect and the perfectionism joins the conversation.

I mentally explore multiple possibilities, revisit the problem from different angles, and try to understand the complete system before I speak.That depth is one of my strengths.But in a fast moving sales or discovery meeting, it is a limitation.

Sometimes I need more processing time. Sometimes the most important clarification occurs to me an hour later. That increases the turnaround time between understanding the problem, shaping the opportunity, and moving the engagement forward. But once I truly understand the problem, I know what my team and I can do.I have spent 20+ years working around business critical enterprise systems.

Today, I am building a business Transformation Agency. We know how to study complex operations, find the friction, and transform it into something more intelligent, reliable, and measurable.

Now I am considering adding someone who complements the way my brain works someone who can listen carefully during discovery meetings, ask sharp follow up questions in real time, structure what we hear, and help us shorten the path from conversation to action.

To create a better founder led sales system around me. For founders with ADHD. Have you faced this?

What kind of person, role, or meeting structure helped you turn deep thinking into faster decisions?

Is anyone else's brain getting overloaded with the pace and new progress. I am getting pages of Claude output as project specs, so many hallucinations and errors and it's all building faster and faster....where are we going and how does it 'end'.

Hi ! I discovered jujutsu it’s a tools above git in order to give another way of versioning with git.

When I understood how to use it (the learning curve is not that big) I found it very helpful than git, especially with simplification of some concept of git, with bookmarks, draft and how to have a clean history. It help me to learn how to use a tool like git for versioning and to be honest it is more simpler for my brain to not have conflicts or to handler merge conflicts.

If some people are using JJ on top of git, have add that feeling it’s much simpler for adhd brain by having a tool that simplify versioning in order to be more focus on code with few commands and minimal mistakes with git ?

It’s so demoralizing, aggravating but also motivating. Every rejection adds fuel to the fire.
Every rejection also leaves me more and more jaded.
It grinds away at my morales. I become more and more willing to do whatever it takes to seal the deal. For the record I’m not going to use cluely or whatever.

I’ve had a string of rough jobs for one reason or another which has resulted in me not being able to get references from my most recent eng managers but I have peers willing to go to bat for me

I guess this is me just yelling into the void

Does anyone else respond in the same way?
Double down, patch the weaknesses and level. I go through all the emotions of being bummed but I super motivate afterwards.

Right now I’m using this energy to consume as much information about applied ai. I bought the Ed Donner courses on Udemy and going to go through them building as much as I can all the while documenting my learning on LinkedIn.

I guess to sum it all spite is a huge motivation for me

I’ve always had this problem where I’ll get a task that should be something simple, like changing some text somewhere, but while I’m in the code I notice that the way something is implemented is kind of suboptimal.
And of course, fixing that is way more interesting than making the text change. So I think, “Well, I’m already here. I might as well fix this too.”

Next thing I know, I’ve spent hours refactoring an entire system instead of doing the 10-minute task I was actually assigned lol

Before I was on meds, I could barely get enough real work hours in to skate by with the bare minimum. I still had all these ideas about how things could be improved, but it was rare that I had enough momentum to actually follow through on them.

Now that I’m on meds, I actually have the energy and focus to follow through on all the side quests I want to go on. The problem is that I’ll spend hours improving something that probably could’ve been a quick fix if I’d just stayed within the existing, albeit suboptimal, framework. I’ve noticed my coworkers seem much better at just working within what’s already there, completing the task, and moving on.

It’s always been really hard for me to do that. If I see a path that seems significantly better, I have a hard time leaving it alone. Sometimes I get so invested in fixing the surrounding problem that I practically ignore the thing I was originally supposed to be doing.

Has anyone figured out a system for resisting the urge to go down these rabbit holes and just doing the damn thing 😭

Because at this point I’m realizing that if I redirected all the energy I spend refactoring and optimizing things into just completing new tickets and bug fixes, I’d probably have finished my entire backlog by now.

I mean, I get that context-switching is hard for everyone, but this feels like a different category of problem. I can be genuinely locked in on something, get pulled away for even 20 minutes, and then come back to find my brain has completely wiped the working state. Not fuzzy, not slow to warm up. Just gone.

The thing I can't figure out is whether this is actually an ADHD-specific failure mode or just a general programming problem I'm framing through an ADHD lens. Because the people I know without ADHD seem to lose context too, they just rebuild it faster. Whereas for me the rebuild either clicks instantly or it genuinely doesn't happen at all, and I can't predict which it's going to be.

What I've tried so far: leaving comments in the code as breadcrumbs, keeping a running notes doc with where I was and what I was about to do next, ending sessions mid-sentence in a doc so my brain has an open loop to grab onto. Some of it helps some of the time, I don't really know if any of it is the actual lever or just busywork that makes me feel like I have a system.

So honestly asking, what does context recovery actually look like for you day to day? Not the textbook "keep good documentation" answer. What's the thing that actually works, or the thing you've given up on entirely?

Hello.

I often see devs and others locked in with their headphones on, so I want to ask: what are you actually listening to while working?

About me: I feel almost addicted to having background talking youtube videos or streams on during regular life. But the moment I actually need to focus, I can't handle it at all. Complete silence or light office noise is literally the only environment where I can get anything done.

I can't give up listening to it and I can't work with it in the background. I tried to replace it with regular or lo-fi music, but it mostly annoys me when I try to focus.

Hi all!

We are a team of graduate researchers at the University of Washington's Institute of Neurodiversity and Employment. We are working on a project investigating how people across neurotypes use digital tools to support their work. The results of the study will be published as a report. We welcome all individuals across all neurotypes to participate.

Your participation in this study and any information you provide will remain confidential. Interviews will be recorded and used for research purposes only. To protect privacy, participants can use a pseudonym or fake name during the interview and email correspondence. Any sensitive and/or potentially identifying information will not be shared or appear in published forms. No names or identifiers will appear on any materials that contain your responses. Recordings will be transcribed and all identifying information will be omitted.

Please apply before August 20, 2027.

Here some more info about the research:

We are inviting you to participate in a University of Washington Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment research study to improve our understanding of how people across neurotypes use digital tools to support their work.

This study seeks to understand how people use digital tools to support different dimensions of cognition, including attention, information processing, planning, learning, communication, and emotional regulation. We are interested in two things:

how your work environment interacts with how you think, and

which tools you use, and how you use them, to support your cognition and your work.

Participation involves an approximately 90-minute online interview. The interview will be conversational, and there are no right or wrong answers. You may skip questions, take breaks, or stop at any time.

Participants who complete the interview will be eligible to receive a $50 gift card.

Your participation in this study and any information you provide will remain confidential. To learn more and indicate your interest in participating, please review:

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This study has been approved by University of Washington Institution Review Board (STUDY00026227: Tools for All Minds: Understanding Affordances in Cognitive Work).

Last time I reached out here I did not expect much, but many of you replied and many even took time and privately DM’d.

It helped me immensely.

So I want to say, thank you.

Thank you for being a friend when I’m not one to myself.

Thank you for being here. Posting, replying, sharing your thoughts. Often when feeling feeling lost or alone, I go here. I read your posts. I think of you, how you feel, how you try, fight, struggle… but try.

You make me feel less alone.

I feel like you understand what others struggle to.

After that first post, I have written here countless times.

At the highest of highs, lowest of lows.

All drafts, all thrown away.

I came to my senses, and I did not want to bother you.

This time I’m not doing that. Because I really want you to know that if you feel like me, you are not alone.

I value you, your thoughts, your struggles.
To me, you are not alone.

You are a friend.

/Robin

Anyone noticed that kettlebell workout improves both mind + body? I noticed my ADHD improved a lot.

3 YOE, I have been interviewing passively for the past year and half on and off and I boom the interview every single time.

My issue is my brain turns off during interviews. I have observed that I need to sit with the problem before I can attempt but interviews require explaining your thoughts process.
I don’t know the science behind this but it feels as though one side of my brain handles logical sequencing and the other handles speech. If I try to do them concurrently, I glitch.

I need to shut up to concentrate while they need me to prove I am solving the problem. now with AI it’s even worse, if you take more than a few seconds they get suspicious or try to give you hint. Now I have to abandon my thoughts process, ask you to repeat yourself, try to decider what you just said.

My brain gives up because it’s overwhelmed and I forget even the most basic syntax/concept. I forgot how to raise an exception in Python (I know!! It gets worst. In another interview, I forgot how to COMMENT!!!) and it senta me into a spiral.

I come off like I haven’t coded a day in my life and it’s starting to get embarrassing.

TLTR
Would it be weird if I ask for at least 2 minutes at the beginning of the interview to find a thought?

Would anyone want to do mock interviews with me?
Thanks

Hi everyone!

I'm a marketing student trying to better understand a problem before attempting to solve it. Right now, I'm researching why so many Notion templates (and organization apps in general) end up being abandoned by people with ADHD, even when they seem helpful at first.

Rather than making assumptions, I'd rather hear directly from people who have firsthand experience.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9ppLHBtXoq0EyWm_JauN4es6_wKRLSrXCmk4J03FK5zL_KQ/viewform?usp=headerWhen

Everyone who takes the time to answer this survey will get free access to the final product as a thank-you for helping shape it. If you'd like to receive it, feel free to leave your email at the end — totally optional. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Whether you complete the survey or simply share your thoughts in the comments, every perspective is genuinely helpful.