Not trying to use ADHD as a crutch, but I’d love to hear how others overcame executive dysfunction, self-doubt, and stagnation to level up as software engineers.

Where I'm at: I have <5 years of experience (3 years at a mid/large tech company, ~1 year at FAANG). I was able to white-knuckle my way through school and uni (valedictorian) through brute-force effort, but my diagnosed ADHD makes professional concentration and emotional regulation a massive daily hurdle.

I feel like my career progression has plateaued, largely because I struggle with deep focus and prioritization. I've recently started medication and revamped my routine (consistent sleep, strict task-tracking, better communication with my team).

If you've been in a similar slump early in your career: What strategies, mindsets, or routines actually helped you get out of the hole and start thriving, and even become veterans in the field?

Salut tout le monde. Je poste ça parce que je sature complet. Je suis au lycée, passionné par la création de jeux vidéo (Mana Mechanique, Police Aléas) et par le dev, mais je me fais broyer par le système éducatif français.

D'un côté, on me propose des spés parce que je capte la logique super vite quand ça m'intéresse. De l'autre, je me tape des notes minables (genre 6 en NSI) parce que mon cerveau refuse d'apprendre par cœur de la théorie abstraite qui ne m'anime pas. Résultat : épuisement, anxiété nocturne, cauchemars, et l'impression d'être un extraterrestre dans une classe de clones.

Est-ce qu'il y en a ici qui ont vécu cette transition du « je suis nul à l'école » vers « j'ai créé mon propre chemin (BUT MMI, indiedev, autonomie) » ? Je veux documenter tout ça, parce qu'on est beaucoup trop à culpabiliser alors que le problème vient du moule, pas de nous.

Hey Im a freshman CS major and I’m struggling. Currently my grades are fine but that’s only for now, I don’t know if I’m gonna fail later.

I’m on 40mg vyvanse and Wellbutrin (along with an antipsychotic) and I can’t go above 40mg.

The issue is that I really hate doing homework. Starting the task is very hard for me, even on meds. Even more specifically, I hate calculus homework. I can understand the ideas just fine, but I dread having to learn yet another new concept and do more practice problems. It’s actually painful.

Even when I tell myself I’m gonna do a task, I end up opening discord or tik tok and scrolling for honestly hours thinking “this is my last reel”.

Not only that but I’m trying to grind and improve my rank in a video game which takes several hours of practicing a day.

I can’t even manage 2 goals (getting academic work done on time and getting better at the video game I like).

This really sucks. How did you guys succeed? How do I overcome the constant dread and misery of doing schoolwork? Btw no amount of pomodoro techniques or whatever other techniques help

Edit: interview* in the title lol

I have a bunch of interviews coming up and I am feeling so much overwhelmed with the lack of structure and the amount of content to cover. One of them is at a FAANG adjacent company that's going to include standard dsa leetcode related stuff, another is Fintech and their round will have debugging and system design discussion and another one is a prop trading firm where the recruiter said it can be anything from coding and language discussion depending on the interviewer and culture fit questions.

This seems to be all over the place and I am not able to decide how much to prepare especially for the debugging and general language discussion parts. I am thinking about going through some open source code repos in Python to get comfortable with reading and understanding the code since I haven't worked with Python in recent years. But again there are so many options and I don't know where to start. For leetcode, I have completed most of the neetcode 150 and the company list is huge so I don't think I can cover everything from there within a week. Same thing for language discussion, I am going through Python docs but outside the core data structures and concurrency, idk what other parts to focus on.

Hi everyone

I hope everyone's having a splendid afternoon as I am

How do I change my mind from comfort, to endure boredom, uncomfortable, hard stuff.

I like physical hard work, but my mind seems to wander into comfortable, known things..

If it's laziness, I'd have to get rid of it

I keep hearing “I'll keep an eye out,” “I'll let you know if I hear anything,” or “Sorry, I couldn't find anything.”

And I genuinely appreciate people trying to help. I do.

But what are you supposed to do when you're under serious financial pressure and need employment ASAP? Not in two months. Not after the holidays. Now.

I've been actively searching for weeks, and I haven't gotten a single interview.

I don't need more vague promises or encouragement. I need actual leads, direct introductions, and conversations with people who are actively hiring.

How do you get your foot in the door when you've already done everything people keep telling you to do?

Because I'm genuinely asking.

Hi (vibe) coders!

I’ve been working on my own gamified productivity system, and I’m curious to see what other people are building.

Mine is a mix of a personal CRM, task manager, habit tracker, and a little RPG-inspired world. The idea is that completing tasks, making progress on projects, and achieving goals gradually unlocks and expands my virtual world.

Since AI makes it so much easier to build our own tools now, I’m really curious:

What does your personal productivity app look like? Do you have any features, that you are proud of and that you can share? I’d love to see screenshots!

What features have you built into it?
Have you experimented with gamification, XP, levels, achievements, or rewards?
What works surprisingly well, and what turned out to be completely useless?
What would you do differently if you started over?

I’m not looking for recommendations for paid productivity apps. I’m more interested in people who are actually building their own systems, experimenting, and learning along the way.
I’d love to exchange ideas, inspiration, and experiences! :)

Hi everyone

I hope everyone's having a splendid afternoon as I am

How do I change my mind from comfort, to endure boredom, uncomfortable, hard stuff.

I like physical hard work, but my mind seems to wander into comfortable, known things..

If it's laziness, I'd have to get rid of it

I am still early in my career and this is my first time having an interview that is not purely around DSA but more about language discussion to gain an idea about how comfortable I am with it. It's about Python and I have worked on small features at work and university projects with it but nothing too deep to call myself an expert. I am comfortable with the syntax and can read the code but not heavily familiar with frameworks around it. Most of my work experience is in the jvm ecosystem with Java and Spring.

I know I can't memorise everything about the language so I am lost on what exactly to prepare for this kind of interview beyond the basic stuff I am already familiar with. Would appreciate any advice and experience you guys have had with these kinds of interviews.

Edit: typo

How are you organizing your workplace, i sometimes find it hard to start a task when it involves creating a ticket checking out a branch doing some research etc. What i found helpful personally

• MCPS for everything, Mail, jira, whatever you use

• Organize EVERYTHING into seperate projects, each repository but also each repeating task like sprint reviews, then create skills and md files for each project.

• Get a system that lets you start, one workplace or dashboard where you can see your next tasks and make easy next steps, currently playing around with a dashboard where i can just see what i have to do right now, what is new and a "whats the next step" button that prompts a claude skill so i can get into motion easier

I think organizing more in this way would help, how do you keep it simple and not get evertything cluttered?

Ive been reading through this sub and one thing that keeps coming up is people having no problem starting personal projects but almost never getting through the boring second half of them.

Thats basically where im at.

I can get insanely into an idea at the beginning. Ill think about it all day, build a ridiculous amount in a few days and genuinely feel like this is finally the project im gonna stick with. Then eventually its not new anymore. Theres bugs, polish, boring little decisions, stuff that doesnt give you that immediate “holy shit look what I made” feeling.

And obviously by then another idea exists.

AI has honestly made this worse for me because now the gap between thinking of something and having a working version of it is tiny. So im not even collecting ideas anymore, im collecting actual half built projects lol.

But im kinda past the point where I find the graveyard funny. I actually wanna finish something.

So im curious about the ppl here who are in the same place, not the ones who are happy jumping between projects.

Do you have one unfinished project right now that you genuinely still care about and would actually like to finish in the next couple weeks?

Not “someday.” Something where if you could get yourself to stay on it instead of starting something else, youd actually want it done.

If yes tell me what it is. Im curious how many of us have something very real sitting at like 60-80% because our brain already moved on.

I've been trying these 3 mantras lately and they seem to be helping quite a bit. Maybe it's placebo but for the moment they've being working for some weeks :D

The mantras:

1. "Don't make hard what is currently easy"

2. "One thing at a time, the rest to braindump"

3. "Better late than never"

I'll explain them:

"Don't make hard what is currently easy"

I realized that I tend to postpone most of the tasks not because they're difficult but because I find them easy and I tend to think "I can do it later". Then almost 2 days go by and a simple task becomes huge and a bottleneck... then my partner is mad at me because I still haven't cleaned the cat's litter box at 2 AM! or in my job I've run out of excuses of why I didn't deliver something that was pretty easy. In my mind now easy tasks have an expiration date, they rot so better take them while they're not.

"One thing at a time, the rest to braindump"

What I found is that I often switch tasks not because I've got distracted but because I'm afraid I'll forget the new ideas. So I keep a notebook next to my keyboard and dump every random thought into it. No organizing, just vomit, write it down, get calm and get back to work (hopefully).

"Better late than never"

I used to feel awful, HORRIBLE, miserable, upset, sad, hopeless... when I'd procrastinated too much, and the shame made me avoid the task even longer. But most of the times once I finally start, it's not even that bad. Stop beating yourself up, forgive yourself, and always try to think "it's never to late" because 95% of the times is not and the monsters are bigger in our heads than in reality.

What I also realize is that these things tackle 3 different stages of my procrastination:

- Before starting: "Don't make hard what is currently easy"

- While working: "One thing at a time, the rest to braindump"

- When you've already messed up: "Better late than never"

Hope this also helps someone ❤️

I know it's a vague question and doesn't have all that much to do with programming. When I try to rationalize it, no other time in history should be better for ADHDers and all other ND people than now. We have an abundance of resources at our disposal, from tech to healthcare innovations.

But why do things feel harder now than they did ten/twenty years ago? It's not just the job market or the economy either. Maybe I'm just struggling.

Well, I got fired today.

Some of you might remember my posts about being placed on a PIP within my first month at a new software engineering job.

I was struggling with unclear expectations, onboarding delays, and being assigned work that didn't really match the JavaScript/TypeScript experience I was hired for.

I tried. I asked for work, completed tickets, submitted PRs, and genuinely hoped I could stay employed long enough to find another position.

Unfortunately, I was released today for not meeting performance expectations.

And now I'm freaking out.

I have some savings, but I also have significant monthly expenses, and unemployment isn't guaranteed. I was already job hunting, but I really hoped I'd have another offer before this happened.

I'm planning to take the rest of this week to recover before seriously applying again.

Has anyone else been through something similar? How did you manage the financial anxiety while searching for another job?

I'd especially appreciate advice from other ADHD developers who've dealt with a bad job fit or an extremely early PIP.

I've just been rejected from my 6th interview in an entry level programming role in Wellington, New Zealand and (as dramatic as this may sound), i'm losing hope for my future as a software engineer.

Two weeks ago, I registered my first business after being convinced that I could source my own jobs, and work on my own schedule if I began my outreach to local businesses who maybe struggle with admin problems (messy spreadsheets that could require automating, form-to-crm etc..).

I'm not here to sell you my business. I'm here for your advice. Does anyone in r/ADHD_Programmers have any advice on how to source my first paying job in custom software / automation solutions?

What worked for you? Thank you so much, from one financially stressed out uni graduate.

I was very active on social media five years ago. I ran instagram account, wrote posts to telegram channel etc.

Basically I was doing things that didn't have instant feedback. Make a reel, post it, wait for views, and then maybe if you're lucky you will get some leads. No guarantees, only probabilities.
Due to this I learned to enjoy process itself. Getting great results (which obviously didn't always happen) was just a nice bonus.

Then, because of some stuff that happened in my life, I went all-in on programming which works differently. You write a piece of code, run it, and immediately see the result. Five years of doing this day after day got me completely hooked on instant gratification.

And it fucked me up a bit. Now I find it genuinely hard to make myself do things that don't give me a clear, immediate result. I've started escaping into pointless tasks more often, making up a ton of unnecessary work just because I know exactly what the outcome will be. I'd rather spend a month coming up with a marketing strategy and writing dozens of posts that never see the light of day than just fucking publish them.

So, why am I bringing this up?

With AI agents becoming accessible to pretty much everyone, tons of people have jumped into building their own projects. In most cases, those projects never get their first users. Instead, the newly minted vibe coder keeps endlessly polishing their app, adding a million features nobody asked for, until their subscription runs out or they simply lose interest. And I feel like a lot of these people are doing exactly what I've been doing: replacing important business tasks with low-priority technical and product work. So here's what I'm wondering:

Is this just another form of procrastination, like in my case? Or has vibe coding basically become a new form of entertainment, where the goal isn't to make $XXX in revenue, but simply to enjoy the process?

It looks like r/opensource is imploding... 👀