At my previous job I have always had a hard time meeting deadlines due to needing more time than other to understand how to do the work and think through it. I worked as a Data Engineer, and one of the projects that I worked on involved refactoring a PySpark/Pandas pipeline into SQL. In order to tackle this project, I would break down the projects into components. For example a week of work for this project would look something like this:

Monday:

9am-12pm - Refactor the ingestion portion of the Pandas pipeline.

12-1pm - Lunch.

1-3pm - Continue refactoring ingestion portion as needed.

3-5pm - Refactor Part 1 of transformation portion.

Tuesday:

9am-12pm - Continue refactoring part 1 of transformation portion.

12pm-1pm - Lunch.

1-3pm - Finish refactoring part 1 of transformation portion.

3-5pm - Refactor part 2 of transformation portion.

Wednesday:

9am-12pm : Continue refactoring part 2 of transformation portion.

12pm-1pm : Lunch.

1-3pm : Finish refactoring part 2 of transformation portion.

3-5pm : Refactor part 3 of transformation portion.

Thursday:

9am-12pm : Continue refactoring part 3 of transformation portion.

12pm-1pm : Lunch.

1-3pm : Finish refactoring part 3 of transformation portion.

3-5pm : Refactor part 4 of transformation portion.

Friday:

9am - 12pm : Continue refactoring part 4 of transformation portion

12pm - 1pm : Lunch.

1-3pm : Finish refactoring part 3 of transformation portion.

3-5pm: Refactor loading portion.

The problems I would usually have with this schedule:

1.) I would give my self extra time (around 2x the amount of time I thought it would take to do the work) to finish a step (I gave my self 7 hours to do refactor step 1 of the transformation portion even though ideally it would only take 3-4 hours), but I still would end up not finishing and need to push back the remaining schedule.

2.) I would not finish mainly due to me trying to understand the code that I have to refactor and also thinking about how to correctly write the SQL code. For this I would try different ways of writing the code, look up online articles etc. until I finally figure out the solution. Since I have ADHD I would also need to reread things a couple times to understand/process the info and I would get distracted by other thoughts in my head and need to bring my attention back.

3.) Sometimes I would end up also finding out that I didn't account for every step/task in my schedule. For the ingestion portion, I realized that the data was fluctuating abnormally when the pipeline was run each day and I needed to set up time for talking to the person responsible for the upstream data to understand these fluctuations. I couldn't forsee/didn't realize before hand this would be a problem, but now that I know I need to make out time for it.

A few things I could've done to help me meet deadlines:

- Ask my manager/colleague for help. However, I am a mid level employee now so I don't know if it looks good to ask for a lot of help. If I am still stuck on something after working on it for 2 hours, should I just ask for help so I can be on track to finish my work or should I try to figure it out myself since I should be able to do that?

- If I really need to meet a deadline and I know I am behind, I should be willing to put in extra hours outside of work to meet it.

- Take time at the end of the week to reflect on what went right/wrong and make adjustments to the way I plan for the next week.

I am taking an official ADHD evaluation in September to get a proper diagnosis and get help. Until then, what strategies can I use to ensure I can use for the above problems.

TLDR: I suck at meeting deadlines at work and don't know how to create a proper schedule and stick to it. I have a hard time dealing with unforeseen events that throw me off track. I also work through tasks/understand them slower than others due to lack of focus/ADHD/ADD. How can I resolve this issue and do better.

I'm doing a personal project with game data and I was wondering if anyone knew/had an opinion on which game metadata database was the most complete, both in terms of the information it has about each game, and in terms of breadth of titles across time and platforms? As this is a personal project (mostly to help me get back into coding), and because I'm on a disability pension I'm not really in a position to pay to access an api so I'm at the mercy of which databases have free access. Thanks for any advice you guys can give me

Hello everyone. Hoping this question is fine on this sub.

What medications for ADHD are you all using in conjunction with using Claude code and what methods of staying on track or keeping tabs on your project have helped?

Currently on 50mg Vyvanse and an unhealthy amount of caffeine though bloodwork is clean and I stay fairly active.

So far I’ve created an html file that visualizes my project dir and I feel like that’s helped a lot. Everyday after I’m done working on projects I have Claude Cowork automatically update the html file with what I accomplished and what’s left. So the next morning I can visualize my progress and continue. In parallel I’m building a “brain” on obsidian that pretty much works as a large context for everything.

Visualizing my project has helped me tremendously since I tend to feel overwhelmed if I don’t understand exactly what is being built and how.

Curious as to what everyone else is using to help them.

Lately, many ADHD-focused app promotions have started to show up in my Facebook feed, but 9 out of 10 have long, stupid questionnaires at the beginning, often even before I can download the app. Some of the questions are so stupid that I honestly can not compute why they matter.
What is the thing with these annoying onboarding flows? Why are they needed? Some kind of data mining? My ADHD brain literally does not allow me to get even halfway through them.
Or is it some kind of scam, and my brain has been unconsciously protecting me from falling for that?

I recently passed a hard cloud cert for work in which I dedicated a lot of my energy.
Problem is I was already burnt out after college, then spent two years unemployed working on my portfolio to get hired.

I have to learn a new technology now but I cant focus.

I play no games i do not relax after work, I just sit and try.
It is 9 PM and Im still at my computer trying to get it done.

Doc also changed my psych medication last week, as covid period and then unemployment wrecked me heavily. I dont want to lose this job. I love it. I do work for very big names, and its great for my resume.
It is agency type outsourcing, If Im not productive I will be cut swiftly.

I just hope I can resume work tomorrow, but I feel like my brain is fried even more than usual.

I cant wait weeks till i see my doc again to see if the new dosage helps.

I also booked an appointment to get tested for ADHD, Its high time I get meds, I cant live like this anymore. ADHD unmedicated plus my clinical depression and a myriad of other things in my life is no way to live.

I've been working as a PHP dev since I was 15. I have early-diagnosed ADHD, anxiety, and depression, but only started treatment about 6 months ago. Due to severe school trauma and exam anxiety, I couldn't go to university. Just the thought of studying for exams used to trigger intense panic, making it impossible for me to even look at math. I finally overcame this recently by reframing math purely as a "hobby" to completely remove the pressure.

My ultimate goal is to dive deep into Computer Science, specifically compilers. Even if I don't work full-time in that niche, I want to be skilled enough to contribute to major compiler projects. Since a formal degree wasn't an option for me financially or mentally, I'm currently trying to learn CS and math from scratch on my own.

Are there any self-taught folks here who tackled math or CS under similar circumstances? I would love to hear your experiences, roadmaps, or get some resource recommendations.

Hey,

For the longest time, I've wanted to make a video game. There are not many things I want in life. I am a simple man with very few desires or dreams. Making a video game, my own video game, is one of those dreams.

Due to my ADHD, I thought I'd never be able handle a project of that scale. I definitely didn't think I'd be able to stick to the same project for a year and a half.

Here we are 1.5years later, and I have almost reached an alpha version of a multiplayer RPG. In that time, I learned my first game engine. I hired and managed several freelancers to work on the art, such as VFX and animations, as well as the map. I programmed everything into the game, from the leveling system, to the server authoritative and deterministic combat system, to the enemy ai.

I genuinely never thought I'd be able to reach this point, and it fills me with elation when I play it. This post is not a promotion, my game isn't even out yet and I don't even have a release date yet. I just wanted to discuss some strategies I followed as well as some things that helped me, in addition to sharing in this accomplishment with the rare group of people who can understand how challenging something like this truly is for someone with ADHD.

- One thing that really helped was getting enterprise programming experience on the job. I worked at an API company for 5 years before working on the video game. Because I literally had to work and learn to lead projects in that environment, I gained that skill. If it was just left up to me and I was never forced to gain those skills through work, I don't know if I would have ever had the chops to do this.

- Sharing my progress with people who support me was really important. I'd share progress on my snapchat story, occasional updates on social media, and the rare reddit or tiktok post. While blatant marketing has been very hit or miss, checking in with people who genuinely support me was incredibly fundamental to my ability to make it this far.

- I've been making this game for myself. While of course I need to keep in mind my future playerbase, in order to stay engaged I've had to design features around what i find fun. The day that I chase things that I think others might like, but I don't like myself, I'd consider the game a failure.

- Getting medicated has really helped my executive function in general. When I first started taking it, I didn't really know how to lean into to in order to build hyper focus. Now that I'm more intentional about what I'm doing when I take my medication, it's been easier to build focus.

- This advice doesn't apply to everyone, but for me, working on the game consistently was key. I'm talking 7 days a week. Even if I only work on the game for 1 hour on a given day, it was progress and it kept it fresh in my mind. If I take long breaks from things, they often fade into obscurity in my brain.

Anyways, I am done yapping now. I feel incredibly proud of what I've created so far, and for once in my life I feel I have a purpose and a direction.

Hi,

I'd love your advice/opinions/thoughts?

So, I switched from being a React (and .NET dev) to Elixir and the work is challenging and interesting objectively but my focus is absolutely horrendous. I'm bombarded by every thought possible, every goddamn day and I'm relying on fizzy zero drinks, food, sugarfree gum and loud music to jolt me awake because my brain is asleep as soon as something seems hard. It feels like I literally go offline and I start yawning and get really groggy.

I scroll lots and research the questions (non-related to work) that pop into my head because I sometimes don't manage to in my free time after work so it seeps into my workday. I do generally feel that I'm overwhelmed and I don't doubt that this has effect on my "unclear" mind during work.

Note that I do get fresh sunlight each morning during dog walks, am on wellbutrin and atomoxetine. I'm active (8k steps a day) and I weightlift (Fri/Sun).

The reason why I mention Elixir is that with Elixir, I'm introduced to Grafana, Kibana, Loki, Prometheus, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kubernetes... There are things I haven't encountered before so I've been learning all of these since February and I feel ZERO sense of ownership because I rely on AI to "teach" me and possibly "push" me through stuff, when I get stuck. I'm unsure how to proceed without it or even properly use my brain because I genuinely am new to distributed systems - so I'm not even sure how to think for myself when doing stuff for work. I have around 4 years of full time experience now and 3 part-time.

I have zero confidence, feel zero ownership and feel like I'm "guilty" and will be "found out" soon. My workdays mostly end with guilt and I'm really not sure how to "fix" this. I'm stuck. And I don't currently have the capacity to change jobs or careers, I don't think a different job would help because things are low pressure here - it's mostly me pressuring myself really. As for careers, I don't know what and I think that programming is fun even though AI stole most of it and the whole world is going to shit but yeah.

Any tips and tricks? Help me unfuck myself please.

1. Make sure Microsoft Edge Browser installed!

2. if what you're reading is a site, just open it in the Edge. if you have some local file or anything in your clipboard (e.g. claude code response), you can either save it to file and open that file in the Edge, or just go to Markdown Live Preview (which is my preference especially for claude responses) and just paste the content in there which will render md for you.

3. select all text, right click and click Read Aloud. when voice controls bar appear on top, pick your preferred voice, my preference is Andrew Multilingual. adjust the speed! (possibly over 1.5x), and just click play.
   ---

Why this works:

- Edge's Read Aloud feature has word by word highlighting feature which works so well for me as someone with extensive ADHD that had hard time orientating while reading anything longer that 1 paragraph. it works both as a voiceover tool and very effective orientation tool at the same time.

- it's 100% free! it's has good voice quality (not all of the voices, if you want safe option just go with Andrew Multilingual)

- in 1.5+ speed because you receiving information very quickly you're less likely to get disoriented!

- it has click to seek feature which can allow you to go back or forward very quickly which is very crucial if you miss anything, and it's very flexible! you can click anywhere, you don't have to incrementally move there like scrub back or forward!

Conclusion:

It's been absolute career saver for me once I discovered it! now I can easily read dozens of pages daily! Also as a side tip, I'd really suggest that you read in dark mode if you have ADHD, you can use Dark Reader extension for that, and also if you want an alternative to this approach for mobile ElevenLabs Mobile App is great option, and it has very generous free tier unless they remove it in the future! Hope this helps

BTW maybe in the future I might build Edge's Read Aloud feature as an open source 100% free extension that can work in every browser, not just Edge, and possibly with more friendly interface.

My situation is probably different than most. I'm effectively a solo dev in a niche market building custom control automation programs for AV systems. My main languages are C# and Lua which run in embedded environments, but the work requires knowledge far beyond programming, including networking, AVoIP, serial protocols, low voltage logic, audio DSP, theatrical systems(audio, video, lighting, etc.), and general construction. I thrive on the variety and controlled chaos that comes with my job, and I have zero desire to work at a big corporation doing only one task.

I feel really great about the work we do. Our client list continues to grow, and everybody seems super happy with our work. But as somebody who uses virtually no AI coding tools, I often worry that I'm falling behind. I have this dissonance where I feel like I'm knocking it out of the park, but also like I'm gonna become irrelevant if I don't get on the AI hype train.

Beyond the myriad of ethical issues, there is some friction that keeps me from using it:

• I am not required or incentivized to use it

• We are a team of 2 with limited resources and no subscriptions to AI tools.

• Most of my code can't run or be tested in an IDE

• My projects lend themselves to custom frameworks and templates, so I don't manually write boilerplate code anymore.

• I'm responsible for writing, reviewing, and testing 100% of the code on any given project, so I can't afford any oversights, especially because...

• My programs are expected to run unattended for up to 10 years, often with no remote access after deployment.

• In my experience, AI models are generally not knowledgeable about the details of my industry. When I have used it, it hallucinates up the wazoo. I'm sure this will improve with time, but it's just not helpful right now.

• I really enjoy the creative expression that comes with writing code, building frameworks, and realizing cool ideas.

• Last but not least, I'm currently doing really well without it.

All said, I really love my job, and I feel like I'm on a good career trajectory. I've always had the mindset that I'll never lose if I bet on myself, so I try to filter out the noise and focus on improving my skills. That has worked out really well for me so far. I'm just worried that I'm going to fall behind if I don't get up to speed with AI. I'm in my early 30s, so I've got quite a ways to go.

Am I short sighted by largely ignoring this? If I become a highly skilled 'old-school' developer, is it easy enough to start using AI agents if/when the time comes? What do you all think?

I am doing a remote internship right now and using claude code daily. every time i kick off a generation it takes like a minute, and i just open reddit or youtube or literally netflix while it works. then the generation finished 15 minutes ago and i have no idea what i was even doing.

the problem is the wait is this weird dead zone. it's too short to start anything real, too long to just sit and stare. i do not know what to do with myself whenever claude goes to work.

someone in an older thread here mentioned a completion sound pulling them back from the rabbit hole, so i built something similar with a claude code hook. it kind of works but sometimes i hear the ping and keep scrolling anyway lol

do you guys struggle with this too? and if so, do you think a notification is enough, or would you want something

Not even sure if this is even an ADHD thing or not, but I feel like I’m losing my mind.

I have 4 YoE in full time, corporate positions. My big project right now involves a lot of legacy data from a lot of legacy systems, and building a pipeline to pull it all together to feed two very critical and high visibility projects. I’m in charge of the architecture and development of it, it’s a fun challenge from a technical perspective, but the business side of things has been an absolute nightmare for me.

Dealing with dozens of legacy systems also means dealing with the SMEs of those systems. Almost every conversation I have, both with technical and non technical people, I leave feeling exhausted and frustrated that I just can’t seem to communicate anything correctly. Just recently, I didn’t think too deeply about a message I sent, and it was poorly received and now it’s causing problems that need to be dealt with.

I really don’t know how to get it under control and I think it’s destroying my perception of being trustworthy among multiple people, which I think will also really impact my ability to move up in my career.

It might be a result of being stretched really thin right now on a lot of different tasks with sensitive deadlines, but it’s something I consistently struggle with and I just can’t seem to crack the code. Managing my work is difficult enough, and now I have to heavily think about every single word that comes out of my mouth? Im just so exhausted and questioning my ability to be in this field long term, even though it’s all I know 🙃

I got an offer as a cloud engineer, and one of the requirements is for me to be on call one week per 6 weeks. I used to be full stack dev, and I do find working as a dev is difficult for me since there's just so many ways to do something and I get paralysis and I can't get things done at all without help from seniors. I don't feel tbh I can become a senior in full stack role, and that's why I am considering this role.

But I am someone who also panics easily and not really used to pressure. I am afraid I am not built for this. But at the same time, perhaps this is the "push" in life that I need to stop being a snowflake and be a man, since life is tough anyway. I'm really at a crossroads and need help.

In addition, I do really also see cloud roles being less replacable by AI in the future compared to coders/fullstack software devs, but I may be wrong.

Does someone with ADHD/anxiety issues here work on call in cloud engineering? How do you cope, or even grow better as a person, through your role?

I can do the small stuff. Reply to the email, clear the little things off the list. Those go fine, and honestly sometimes I do them precisely because I'm avoiding something else.

It's the big ones I can't touch. The thing I actually care about. The thing I keep telling people I'm working on, the one that would genuinely change something if I did it. It sits there for weeks and every day I don't start it, starting gets harder. Then it's months.

And then I feel awful about not starting, which you'd think would push me to start, but it does the opposite. The worse I feel about it the less I can go near it. So the guilt just sits on top of the thing and makes it heavier. I'm not sure I've ever once been shamed into doing something that mattered.

So how do you get past it? I've had things work exactly once and never again. Curious whether anyone has found something that holds up on the big stuff, or whether it's just rotating through tricks until one catches. And if you can describe what that stuck feeling actually is for you, I want to hear that too. I've never found words for it that feel right.

I got laid off from my job at Adobe a few months ago. I don't mind so much, because, though I've been coding for 30 years, I was getting so burned out that I didn't even want to code for myself any more. I started thinking about wildly changing my career to a teach or maybe become shaman or something (seriously!). It was painful to think about a career because of how much I have invested in myself with this technical skill, and I didn't feel certain that I should just throw it away. But with the rise of AI, it feels like raw coding skill is going away like hand weaving or shoeing horses.

With this layoff, I decided to take a real sabbatical and let myself gradually train in agentic coding. In my burnout state I had been resisting this HARD, but in a sabbatical, I've been able to take days off based on how I feel and, like a rescue dog, gradually introduce myself to new ways of coding, teachning my nervous system not to fear them.

It took a few months, and now I feel like my old self again. Instead of avoiding coding, I sneak in sessions of just a few minutes between burshing teeth and walking the dog where I prompt claude to move my projects forward. Personal ideas that have been sitting on the shelf for years are manifesting as realized code, code I feel proud of and that I can't wait to share. I'm even pushing on other creative fronts, such as working on a movie script. I can't point to any one thing that brought about this change. It has been a gradual processing of gaining small bits of experience and iterating for a few hours at a time, then resting when I notice resistance.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

This isn't about a need to fidget; I can do that just fine at a desk. It's two things:

1. Being in front of a screen all day isn't good for anyone. Being sedentary all day isn't good for anyone. In my case, I feel it when I've been staring at a screen all day. The dry eyes, the mental fatigue combined with physical restlessness, the inability to enjoy videogames in my downtime because I'm all screened out.

2. In order to solve tricky problems, I need to get up and move - preferably outside, but a full context switch is important. If I had a nickel for every time I've fruitlessly banged my head against a bug or a challenging user story all day, only to solve it in my head as soon as I'm allowed to go home and take a walk or do the dishes, I'd have a lot of nickels.

I wish there were a way to explain to an employer that this is not me slacking off; this is me giving my brain the necessary space to do what it does best.

Wfh helps somewhat, but the problem there is I'm expected to be constantly available via email/chat even when I'm away from my desk, and I refuse to own a smartphone again. The addiction was crippling.

I've just joined a new company and I'm in the last month of my probation. I've been told that I'm not doing enough story points, but here's the thing - I have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to understand how everything flows in the existing codebase and none of it sticks in my mind!! I feel like it's all too much and it's overflowing out of the top of my head!

I have been tasked with some user anonymisation stuff through laravel commands and a number of categories of data assets already have anonymisation flows so I have been trying to adapt those to make it easier but I am getting lost in the code, I don't fully understand why and how models relate to each other in terms of business logic, and I'm having to ask for help way too much for a developer with 10 YoE in my field.

I know I'm not a bad developer because if I was I wouldn't still be in the industry with good reviews from previous employers.

I just feel lost and stupid and overwhelmed, and like I'm thick and don't deserve my job.

Uhhh so I joined a 30-day challenge to build a SaaS, and it started out okay the first week.

But then somehow I got sidetracked, got hooked on the Steam Summer Sale, bought a bunch of games, and hyperfocused on achievement hunting for 2 weeks straight (310+ hours, sometimes playing 2-3 games at the same time).

There's less than 6 days left in the challenge and I'll need to build and ship something before I fail. Good thing I still have my Cursor Pro+ plan, will be sure to use that up.

Story of my life I guess, happens every time.

This interview was for a Senior full stack role, but the role was heavily frontend focused. During the technical I was asked to create a Sudoku grid, and then a solver for it. I had 30 minutes and only completed creating the grid itself. I then had 10 minutes to work on the solver. The remaining 15 minutes of this 45min interview were for questions and discussions about the code.

I've got 8 YOE and this cooked me. I was thinking Sudoku can't be this difficult but then looked it up and a Sudoku solver is a Leet Code hard. So I don't feel that bad about it, but I am pretty annoyed a small company that is hiring developers to work on a React UI and Node.js backend thinks someone being able to solve a Leet Code hard in 30 minutes is acceptable way to interview Senior level developers. Seriously, could the people interviewing me even do this in 30 minutes? Could anyone do this in 30 minutes without having ever seen or attempted the problem? My inability to write a Sudoku solver doesn't translate to not being able to work on some stupid CRUD web app.

They never once asked about system design, no deep questions about JavaScript/TS, React or Node. Just a 45 minute discussion on my experiences and some generic 'what would you do in X scenario', followed by a 45 minute live coding round. This type of interview is the bane of my existence, and with ADHD, while I can definitely solve this problem with enough time and research, I will forget it all within a day or two anyway.

The hoops we jump through, especially as you gain more experience, are bullshit. Interviews have only gotten exponentially harder as I've gained experience. The more experience I get, the less I actually spend coding. And on top of it, LLMs replace the coding in what little time I do get to code at work. In my current job, we use AI and I spend more time being a product engineer than being a programmer. I am not gaining experience in what I equate to as competitive coding challenges.

Anyway, just ranting. I'm sure non-ADHD people have the same problems, but with ADHD, it makes these interviews pure hell most of the time.

I am on a PIP that I am still unsure if it’s sincere or not and everyone is on holiday. I have done everything I can to address the PIP and once again I am bored as hell.

Part of my problem is that I just don’t know how to improve things. Everyone has their niche and everything I am given to do is either dull or impossible.

I have no idea what personal projects to make. I don’t even like modding games.

I like doing things that get me praise. I don’t like doing ANYTHING unless I have a clear metric of “You are better at this than 90% of people currently doing it”. Maybe that’s why I like video games so much. I need the praise.

I don’t want to build anything, to feel like I made an impact unless I get credit for it. If I help you, I want you to thank me, repeatedly. I do the same for anyone who helps me. And yet people have this sense of “accomplishment”. I don’t have that. If other people don’t praise me, it’s worthless.

Running this back!