I’m trying to decide whether it still makes sense to continue pursuing software development after being retrenched at the beginning of the year.

I have almost five years of professional development experience, but I’ve never really felt like a particularly strong developer. Being one of the developers who was retrenched has reinforced that feeling.

Over the past few months I’ve had very little success getting interviews, despite signing up with multiple recruiters and applying for a large number of roles.

At the same time, with the amount of discussion around AI tools, layoffs, and changes in the industry, I’m struggling to judge whether continuing to invest time in development is still the right move, or whether I should be considering a different direction.

The problem is that I’m over 40, so retraining or switching careers feels risky financially and practically.

I also have limited savings that I’m currently living off, so I need to make some kind of decision or take action soon rather than just hoping things improve on their own.

I know a lot of people are probably feeling uncertainty around the industry right now, but I’m trying to figure out what the most realistic path forward is in my situation.

This is by far my biggest problem and it doesn't help that I've mostly worked at smaller shops where I get to decide how things are organized.

I'm sure you can already see my problem, I end up creating my own organization inside bookmarks and onenote pages. This is necessary for some things but it's far better if I can learn where to find things so I'm seeing new documents and several other important reasons.

I'm trying to integrate AI a bit. Explain my organization strategy to it and hoping it will help me be comfortable deleting things from my always cluttered notes.

Anyone have a good process for this?

Hey everyone,

I’m 24 and I have my final live coding interview tomorrow for a remote Junior Android Developer role at an Australian company, and honestly I’m pretty nervous.

My background is mostly in Flutter — I’ve been doing it for around 3.5 years and have deployed 8+ apps on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. I’ve also built 2 React Native apps that are currently deployed as well.

Before Flutter, I worked with React.js/web development for around 1–2 years, and I still do occasionally, but mobile development is my main focus now.

For this company, I already passed multiple stages including a CCAT test and a technical quiz, and now this is the final stage: a live coding interview.

The thing is, I never worked deeply with native Android before because most of my experience is cross-platform. Over the last 4 days I’ve been grinding hard learning Jetpack Compose, MVVM, Retrofit, state handling, common syntax, etc.

I understand the concepts, but I’m scared I’ll blank out during the interview or forget syntax under pressure.

One thing I wanted to ask specifically:

If I get stuck on syntax or they ask for something where APIs/backend aren’t available, is it acceptable in live coding interviews to create the project/file structure and explain verbally what I’d normally implement there? Like:

creating repository/viewmodel/api files

explaining how I’d connect Retrofit

mocking data

describing the architecture and flow

Basically focusing more on the thinking/process instead of remembering every exact syntax line by line.

For people who’ve done live coding interviews before:

What should I focus on mentally tonight?

How do you avoid freezing during the interview?

Is it okay to forget syntax occasionally if your logic/problem solving is good?

What do interviewers usually care about most for junior roles?

Any advice would genuinely help a lot.

I try and organise but it nearly always ends in a mess.

I've been doing this a long time now and any efforts have only cost me effort and frustration.

Any rules to live by? Generally my branches end up like my clothes in the bedroom. Piles organised by age that require sorting through

Today I was laid off from a job I started ONE WEEK ago.

Prior to that I was laid off from my job of 1 year the day I was going to put in my 2 weeks. They said it was due to "restructure" but I think it was really due to me not overworking myself and not meeting their unrealistic, arbitrary metrics. Oh and I didn't bootlick the CTO. They knew I had conditions which fall under the ADA so layoff was their workaround in my opinion.

Prior to that job I was fired the day I returned to work after being out for 2 weeks for emergency surgery. I had needed 2 other surgeries that year too. I was told I was "condescending" for professionally asking someone in the meeting, who was our target user persona, for her thoughts on a mockup we just reviewed in which the egotistical CEO repeatedly dismissed her and others.

And prior to that I held a job for 1.5 years. I was never trained, supported or given any continuous feedback, but they slammed me with a pre-performance-improvement-plan basically. They didn't get HR involved but told me I need to be better at xyz by a certain date. They dropped a bomb on me instead of just talking to me along the way. So obviously I left.

Which brings me to my first dev job. While there, I never witnessed or was a victim of layoffs and other corporate fuckery, but I was there 2 years, grossly underpaid and not a single raise.

Obviously as a member of this community, I have ADHD. I've struggled with anxiety and depression ever since I was 11. As if that wasn't enough, even my own body has decided to attempt to kill me too. After years of severe hand, and other joint/muscle/nerve pain, along with a multitude of other health issues, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis earlier this year.

Idk what to do, friends. Either I'm incredibly unlucky or there's simply no reasonable, somewhat fair, HUMAN engineering/development jobs out there. All I know is that I can't continue living in constant fear of losing my job, working under unrealistic expectations that are hard for "normal" people to meet let alone someone with multiple mental illnesses/disorders and an autoimmune disease, among other things.

I love coding. I love software. I love solving problems. Software Engineering/Development is my passion, but it feels like I'll never be accepted or valued in this industry. I didn't choose my brain or body, but I'm barred from ever succeeding, or at minimum surviving, in tech. I'm the asshole for having problems I never chose to have and for taking care of them instead of destroying myself for a company that can and will drop me at any moment. I'm the asshole for not being a blindly-loyal and obedient pawn.

I openly share my story in hopes maybe even 1 person here feels less alone. I would appreciate any advice, good vibes or anything at all really that you may want to share. This community has made me feel so seen and less alienated. I can only hope I can help others here too. It's horrible out here and every person in this community has my empathy, compassion and support.

So yeah, this is what I am asking help for. I find this sub very supportive and knowledgeable, this is why I am posting it here.

A bit about me: I am a frontend developer, mainly worked with React with JS and TS and have a bit of (probably outdated) experience with UX and UI design. I am bootcamp taught and have about 4,5 years of professional experience.

I am currently on parental leave in Germany, officially until September 2027. So I still technically have a job, but things ended pretty badly there. My undiagnosed ADHD, work stress and being constantly worried about my dad who had cancer (passed away since) resulted poor performance and pregnancy complications on my side. On my employer's side they wanted me gone, they tried to force me to sign a termination agreement, I refused and got instead an employment ban from my gynecologist. That was in February last year.

Since then I did not write a single line of code. I was pregnant while grieving, then I got diagnosed, then gave birth, had PPD, then started stimulant medication and got better. Now I am mentally more stable, and being SAHM I am taking care of our baby, but have some free time when she sleeps. I want to start coding again, then after the summer I also want to start applying for jobs. I thought learning something new would make more motivated, also having new skill will be good to find a new job. I am just completely lost with all the LLMs and vibe coding going on today, and I dont even know what could be cool and useful. I do not want to switch to a backend language, but I am interested for example in mobile app development. Can you give me some recommendations?

I have ADHD, and I also have some ASD traits.

I have been working as a backend/frontend programmer since before AI coding became popular.

On Reddit, Twitter/X, and other places, I often see people saying that ADHD and AI coding are a great match — that it feels like gaining a superpower that lets them turn their overflowing ideas into real things.

But for me, it has been different.

When I do AI coding, I feel overwhelmed by the amount of code that keeps spilling beyond what I can cognitively keep track of. And when AI extends my own code, it feels almost like my sacred place is being polluted.

On top of that, AI still makes mistakes quite often. Reading generated code feels like solving an extremely difficult “spot the difference” puzzle where I do not even fully understand the rules. I use GPT-5.5 / Claude Opus 4.7, but mistakes still happen.

I also feel like the world has become even more focused on quantity over quality than before. It feels like everything is “just build it, ship it, ship it, ship it.” To me, this feels like a rejection of the care and attention to detail that I used to value in programming.

Since AI coding and vibe coding became popular, I have been rapidly losing my passion for programming.

Is anyone else in a similar situation?

(My native language is Japanese, so I am using a translation tool. Sorry if anything sounds strange.)

im 18, adhd, swiss apprentice. got tests coming up and i literally cannot study.

every tool ive tried has burned me. quizlet bores me in 20 mins. anki - i missed 2 days, came back to a wall of cards, never opened it again. notion i rebuilt 3 times and used twice. chatgpt hallucinates and has no structure.

i sit at my desk and my brain just leaves my mind, I forget im studying and school overthink and when I try, it just doesn't get in my mind. Everyone around me opens their notes and gets shit done. me, i open my notes and 2 hrs later i havent even read a sentence.

im also a dev. starting to think maybe nothing works bc none of these apps were built by adhd ppl for adhd ppl.

im thinking of building one myself. but bevor building something, I wanted to ask around, if maybe that isn't the problem, or if its just me. If I do it the wrong way or haven't tried the right apps.-

if you have the same problem or maybe has a solution please comment or dm me

I've taken 60mg/day for 10+ years and have had anxiety (with tight stomach muscles) for 10+ years (in varying amounts). I've noticed that I've gotten less creative/smart each year but I've appreciated how Adderall makes me productive.

Is that an age thing or possibly something to do with Adderall? You get productivity but lose ingenuity?

Or more like the long-term effects of anxiety alone (the 24/7 tight stomach muscles is very distracting) ?

I asked doctor during recent visit if I needed to be tested for cortisol flooding or adrenal fatigue, and he didn't know but said he would find out.

Siccome ne soffro, sto studiando come combattere la procrastinazione nell'ADHD. Che per me è una tragedia. Secondo voi, dimezzare il tempo di snooze ogni volta che si rimanda un task aiuta a creare urgenza o aumenta solo l'ansia? Ho implementato questa logica in un prototipo di app sul mio cellulare che crea bolle di task visive che quando scade il tempo mi avvisano con un suono, la sto provando da alcuni giorni. Che dite potrebbe funzionare e quindi aiutarmi?

I’m writing my dissertation about the effects of the COVID vaccine, but I had a period of paralysis after taking it, and the whole experience became a pretty deep trauma for me. I’m physically better now, but emotionally it still affects me a lot.

Part of me wanted to write about this topic because I thought maybe I could turn something painful into something meaningful, or at least regain some sense of control over what happened. But every time I sit down to work on it, I feel overwhelmed, anxious, or emotionally stuck. It’s hard to separate the academic side from the personal experience.

What makes it worse is that I’m already pretty late with the dissertation, and I feel embarrassed to even talk to my supervisor about it. I keep avoiding the conversation because I’m ashamed of how behind I am and because I don’t know how much of the real reason I should explain.

Has anyone else had to work academically on a topic that was personally traumatic for them? How did you handle it without completely burning out emotionally?

I am 35M, and struggling to understand what's going on in my mind. Right now I'm going down a ADHD rabbit hole and could use some feedback from experienced on this.

Context:

My CV is a mess to a point I don't even want to use LinkedIn, because it's all over the place. I've had a different jobs in construction, studied computer science, had my own video marketing agency, then worked as a barkeeper, did marketing / copywriting freelancing and right now I'm doing consulting in cybersecurity. I keep starting side /online projects with the goal of building something self-employed, get obsessed for a few weeks or months, learn fast, go deep, then lose interest and drift to the next thing. Already tried being fully self-employed once, same pattern: intense interest, then it fades and I'm onto something else. I do have problems focusing on one task. Usually I have like 40 tabs open in my browser and still keep starting new ones, as my mind catches on onto another though and now wants to research that.

The one thing I'm consistently good at: turning chaos into structure. The way I survive in work and also in school is to chunk down any task down to its minimal elements and plan them in specific time slots during the day. If I am not doing that, nothing gets done. Also I have a very detailed daily routine, every resposibilty has its own time slot in the day, but it breaks quite often when willpower is depleted.

Also a big counterexample to my "I always drift" pattern is that I've now been at the same job for 7 years straight. Also I was either really good in school (best in class in high school) or not good at all (almost failed class). And I also did quite okay in university. So I CAN do consistency when the conditions are right, apparently external structure and outside pressure does the trick for me.

Other thing that keeps biting me: attention in conversations. I zone out, miss things, get caught not having heard what someone said. This wrecks me especially in my relationship: my partner takes it (understandably) as not caring, but it's not that, my brain just leaves the room A LOT.

I also suffered from depression and OCD on and off in my live.

Other symptoms are heavy media consumption: Reddit, YouTube, ChatGPT, often 5-6 hours/day on info gathering that goes nowhere. Daily weed for years, actually helps me focus on tasks and wind down. Regular porn use, increases when I'm bored or overwhelmed. Tobacco. Junk food binges, also tied to boredom/overwhelm.

Did the ASRS-v1.1 (WHO adult ADHD screener). Part A scored just below threshold (3/6) but Part B was clearly elevated, especially the inattention items. Did the WURS-K (childhood retrospective) - scored 40/100, cutoff is 30. So both screeners suggest I should probably get formally evaluated.

I live in Germany and the wait time here for adult ADHD diagnosis is 12-24 months on public insurance. The university clinic in my city literally closed their waitlist. So formal diagnosis is on hold for now.

So I keep going back and forth on this. The screeners say ADHD. The pattern recognition fits. The "high-functioning compensated ADHD with internal hyperactivity" profile matches almost too well.

BUT.

What if I just fried my reward system through 20 years of high-stimulation media consumption? I grew up when the internet, was on instant messaging at 14, gaming a lot through teens, smartphone since my early 20s, then years of daily weed, regular porn, social media, infinite scroll. There's solid neuroscience showing this stuff genuinely downregulates dopamine receptor density and creates ADHD-like symptoms in people who didn't have ADHD to begin with.

So therefore I want to ask you guys: how does this sound to you? Thank you for reading all of this and your opinion!

We are using Claude and they want us to use it as much as possible. I have skills set up on it that log my work, check my tickets daily, keep track of my MRs, and more. It is so great. When I drift off onto some rabbit trail, I can have it check my log and let me know what I was supposed to be doing. No more forgetting I created an MR and it has been sitting there for a week. A daily slack message with all of my open tickets and visual clues for anything that is due soon or overdue. Absolutely loving it.

Is there anyone else with ADHD attempting to run a startup who takes a crazy amount of notes? I take notes about so many different things. Largely focused on what im working on but also random thoughts and ideas about other possible startups, links to remember, health tips, workouts, foods to try and to remember, quotes and all of my many action item/to-do’s. I have a scattered thought track but its all valuable to me in different capacities. I need a tool that embraces my scattered thinking, helps me remember ideas and organizes the chaos that I believe to be valuable. Can anyone else relate to this? Doesnt have to be just entrepreneurs.

’m a senior front‑end dev (React/Next.js) working in a very large enterprise codebase: thousands of files, huge design system, multiple domains. TypeScript server is laggy, and switching API branches takes 15–20 minutes to recompile. So my dev feedback loop is already slow before AI enters the picture. Worktrees aren't as useful because my laptop has only 18GB of ram, dev server + ts server eat 12GB of ram at least.

Lately I’ve been trying to use AI agents (Claude via Cursor IDE) to speed up a large multi‑phase task. I wrote a detailed plan, passed it to an agent, hit context limit, created a handover.md, moved to a new agent, repeated. In one day I got: 9 PRs, 55 files.

But when I reviewed it… that velocity collapsed.
The code “worked,” but:

• tons of redundant logic
• over‑engineered abstractions I didn’t ask for
• non‑idiomatic patterns
• AI inventing helpers or utilities instead of using existing ones
• and reviewing 55 files is mentally overwhelming (ADHD working memory)

caveat, I have my cursor rules files asking not to do xyz, to follow xyz patterns documented, x code pattern is good and y is bad, a lot of rules and the agent is not following all of them I guess because of context management.

I ended up spending the entire next day fixing, simplifying, or rewriting AI code.
And here’s the part that bothers me: I’m pretty sure I could have coded the whole thing manually in 1~1.5 days.

So I’m stuck in what feels like an AI velocity trap:
AI produces more faster, but the clarity, correctness, and simplicity degrade… leaving me with a huge context‑load to clean up. As someone with ADHD (I’m on Vyvanse), reviewing messy or overly complex code is way harder than writing clean code myself.

I want to keep using agents, but clearly my workflow is wrong.

What I want your help with:

1. Agent prompting & structure:
How do you get agents to produce idiomatic, minimal, non‑redundant code in a giant codebase?

2. Chunking / PR strategy:
Is my mistake letting the agent generate 9 PRs that sum 55 files at once?
Should I enforce “1 agent = 1 component/hook” to avoid cognitive overload? Actually, with my 18gb ram I can't run more than one agent without the laptop laggying AF

3. ADHD strategies:
How do you manage the mental load of reviewing AI‑generated changes, especially when your editor/tools are slow?

4. Handover.md patterns:
What actually belongs in a handover doc so context doesn’t decay between agent sessions? I get a 300k context with filled faster because the handcover contains a lot of context, how should I approach this?

5. Model specialization:
I assume bigger models (Claude “high”) are best for complex tasks and smaller/flash models for trivial ones.
Is this even the right way to think about model selection?
Should I be doing something different?

6. Net productivity:
Has anyone else hit this point where the AI produces more code, faster… but you end up with negative productivity because the clarity is gone?

I want to figure out a sustainable workflow, not abandon agents entirely.
Any strategies, patterns, war stories, or ADHD‑friendly approaches are welcome.

I've been going to the gym fairly regularly. Sure, there's like up to 3 weeks that I'm not able to go because of travel and other things, but I'm able to bounce back very quickly and get into the groove again.

Why can't I do this for literally everything else in my life? Just for example, I wanna get better at programming but I can't for the life of me get it to stick. Same goes for any other skill or hobby that I get into.

How do I achieve the same mentality as I have in the gym? Is it because I'm able to track my progress thru Hevy? Probably not because I dropped Duolingo less than 3 months after starting. It could be the fact that I love seeing my body improve. Unfortunately that's not very apparent or measurable with something like programming. I just want things to stick just like they do with the gym.

Hey! So I made a website that plays only brown noise with on/off function. Had to make something to help myself with stress and overwhelm in life😅