Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
stackoverflow.blog
stackoverflow.blog
You have endless areas to noodle on solutions to avoid issues; you work hard to avoid working hard (strong ADHD trait) and interruptions are either fine and they fuel you completely: or you cannot work with interruptions at all.
Anecdotally: I was a sysadmin (that coded) and I got pretty close to an ADHD diagnosis but was warned off of it by the Swedish health authority (I've talked about it before on HN; basically that my insurances would increase and it could affect mortgages, cannot hold certain vehicle licenses etc;).
I’ve made many stupid small mistakes where someone checks my code in review and finds a small error, or I forget to run the unit test suite (we don’t currently have an auto-testing pipeline) where it’s led me to question my career.
On the other hand, what you describe fits very well with my experiences, endless tasks to do (especially in a “many hats” role), and working hard to avoid work.
Side note: For how well the Swedish system works, I’m surprised that they can do that based on such diagnosis. Affect, mortgages? That’s insane. +1 to the states on that one.
I have no data to back this up, but I'm pretty sure that this is entirely dependent on the work environment. If you have an encouraging environment that is flexible enough to compensate for the downsides of ADHD, than it can also take advantage of hyperfocus and flow states, radically unconventional solutions where creative thinking is needed or super fast context switching to go through a whole host of little problems in a short amount of time.
If the environment instead caters to a very neurotypical way of thinking and does not (or cannot) have a lot of sympathy for people with ADHD than the difficult symptoms will be amplified, while the positives cannot be taken advantage of.
I don't think it has a lot to do with the actual job at all.
Not so in the case, you might lose it for months if you move and switch doctors.
(ADHD is a recognized disability under ADA.)
There are public safety provisions allowed, for example, if you are bipolar, you can not be a commercial airline pilot. Driving a car does not meet the public safety exceptions.
Driving permissions and insurances are a common one, but also: suddenly being deemed medically unfit to do various other things such as possess and use firearms, scuba dive, fly aircraft, etc.
What strikes me as absurd about all this is that they always had ADHD, but once they got it diagnosed and started managing it, they are deemed unfit to do a load of shit.
The FAA doesn't look kindly on ADHD diagnoses for people looking to get pilots licenses, even private. It adds a bunch of extra hoops to jump through.
There are also restrictions on medications you can take and still fly a plane.
It's an executive function DISABILITY, it takes so much work to get it close to useful where it just makes it so your basically on par with everyone after it.
I have ADHD. I write down a ton of notes. I have a large, and growing, note-taking environment (Obsidian). After a while using features such as backlinks, etc, you begin to see just _how connected_ everything you know is. Interdisciplinary _is the way to work_, not in some narrow silo.
I do not have a job I care about too much right now, so I am not focused at all on my day job. But I can focus for _hours_ writing code or doing some tinkering in a lab -- the goal is to get a job where I can do either of these...but that requires graduate school.
I have "talk shop" level knowledge in what feels like 20 different domains. I tell people that I am a "jack of all trades but a master of none". A Blessing and a curse.
It's like everyone is climbing a mountain, and they are wearing snow shoes, but I'm stuck with normal boots or worse. However, when I start having fun climbing I plucked off the ground by a ski lift that takes me to a random place up the mountain. If I'm travelling in groups or trying to reach a certain place, to not get lost I have to jump off the lift. Then I'm back to walking on foot, hurt but in an ache but not an actual damage and I have to try to keep up with the snow shoe folk again.
I will say that my hyperfocus as a software developer was almost all upside until I had to support multiple efforts. The talking over people lack of time management and tendency to focus on the most fun task at hand were all things my good managers could work around and forgive.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_versus_farmer_hypothesi...
But I sort of philosophically struggle with the "disorder" bit of it. I live in a box with a glass wall facing other boxes with glass walls and type into a computer screen any time that I'm not actively going to the gym or doing something outdoors becuase the default thing I do is try to create enough material prosperity to exist.
This seems like something that would have a caveman climbing the walls, which is roughly how I feel about the glass box / computer screen routine when I'm not on ADHD medication.
Is is "neurotypical" to be perfectly at ease spending hours hunched in front of a screen under artifical light in order to eat, or is it "neurotypical" to be fantasizing that the pool cue next to my monitor would fly pretty straight if a lion walked through the door?
Someone with ADHD has trouble controlling attention. To be a disorder, this needs to be severe enough to limit you.
There is a significant overlap in behavior with neurotypical and neurodivergent people. What separates them is what is driving that behavior.
I'm sure you mean well by your comment but I'd be more interested in what you think about the broader theme of "knowledge work as a path to high achievement denominated in society's rewards" than whether or not I personally have a bunch of agency about wanting rewards.
If we take the caveman argument at face value, the moment humanity started farming, we diverged for what we were evolved for.
In that time, the labor required for survival declined and more people had time to focus on more than mere survival. This was the start of societies and a class of people who ruled farmers.
Looking at it this way, knowledge work has existed in one form or another for millennia. Anyone who wrote books would qualify. Many of these people worked in organizations far more powerful that the laboring classes.
The Industrial Revolution accelerated this and today, we’re looking at ultimate result of that development.
For myself, I’m happy to participate in society’s benefits. I find knowledge work satisfying.
Besides, in a hunter/gatherer society, I’d have been a shaman, the original knowledge worker. ;)
- Stepping on a branch while hunting because of a fractal pattern in the nearby tree.
- Get drop-kicked by a puma because they spent too much time looking at the ground while trying not to break a branch while hunting.
- Getting distracted and missing their ability to ambush prey.
- Their spear breaking because of a lack of maintenance.
- Spending weeks trying to improve their spear and forgetting to eat/sleep/drink regularly.
- Poisoning themselves/another because they started glossing over the details while picking mushrooms.
Control over concentration has never been solely a modern day requirement.
Also my spear would be really well maintained and that is because I'm trying to improve it when I know there is nothing around and I would want to be ready for when there is a puma around and I would also be excited to try to want to test it to see if the improvements I made on the spear were actually improvements. Lol
That said, as we’ve injected more and more process into software development over the last decade or so I’ve found it harder and harder to engage. I respect its necessity but JIRA is nearly the opposite of the exploratory experience of programming.
How would you know?
This number is totally unrealistic when the prevalence in the adult population is 2-4%.
Unless you work with 3 people, one of which has ADHD.
I certainly think it's plausible that there's certain sectors that see a prevalence well in excess of the general population. And there's enough variance between companies that some will be even higher.
30% does sound rather high but "laughable" implies the person you are replying to has stated something so far beyond that that mockery is the only appropriate response.
So they decide they should go on to work with software since it keeps distracting them from everything else.
Ironic that they end up building even more psychologically exploitative software that hijacks our attention
Small groups can differ significantly from the population average more easily than large groups.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a larger percent population of ADHD in MAANG tech vs in the general population.
But to try and counter myself, there’s typically a larger population of ADHD (or it’s permutations) in trade jobs (though I argue programming is a trade skill, just a new breed in our digital age. Though I digress)
Just for another fun data point.
Also, there are some jobs someone with ADHD will have a lot of trouble keeping. Jobs that benefit from hyperfocus are not among them. Many therapists will suggest careers like engineering, tech or writer (perhaps technical) for precisely that reason. So you would expect highly elevated rates of ADHD in those fields.
I myself do suspect people of having the condition without being a hundred percent certain they have it or know it themselves.
Side note: I'm 34 years old and just 3 days ago, was evaluated by a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with adult ADHD.
I really struggle with yak shaving and perfection being the enemy of good as well, my ADHD often devolves into OCD like behaviors.
Describe the desired completed task to an imaginary third person. Poorly defined tasks can often make starting more difficult.
Describe the desired completed task to an imaginary third person. Poorly defined tasks can often make starting more difficult.
Thanks! The 2nd point particularly makes a lot of sense.
Filled with tons of practical tips on managing your ADHD
With too many things to juggle, you have to face the reality and drop some commitments, so you work only on the few things that you can manage without being overwhelmed.
To get started, it helps to extract a small (10-20min) specific starting task from a big vague task. Just don’t split the whole project into too many pieces at once, because that may start looking like too much.
And medication. Lots of people report that it really helps.
Besides that, I've not had much luck being able to channel the focus medications bring, except one key thing. Take your medication after you get started on whatever you want to accomplish. Once the meds kick in, your attention will often grab onto whatever you happen to be doing, and stay there.
Another huge help is the OHIO principle: Only Handle It Once. Try to catch yourself whenever you think "I'll do it later", and do it right away instead. Maybe give yourself a reward whenever you manage to do this, for some self-conditioning.
As for the situation you mention, there is no shame in asking friends or family for help(to do some of the chores, help you get started). Especially if you ask someone who also has ADHD, they will understand your pain and want to help. Often getting that reset back to normal is the best way to get into better habits.
I find it's much harder to establish better habits when I have a gigantic list of unfinished chores to do.
My preferred medium for notes and Todo lists is index cards. When I complete the tasks that fit reasonably on a card, it goes in the trash. Something about not wanting my desk littered with cards encourages me to complete them; software lists just grow and are easily forgotten/filed out of sight, or worse, become their own organizational, hyper-focus rabbit hole.
I don't know if I have ADHD, but I'm definitely a chronic, severe procrastinator. I've been looking for a method to overcome it for 20 years. Finally, I tried body doubling, and it was like magic: suddenly, I became productive. I immediately made a drastic decision to hire someone to sit with me every day. I was a software developer, so going from 2-3h billable hours to 6-7h/day was well worth the expense. I hired a stay-at-home dad, and we connected every morning to work together (well, I was working, he played games and watched Netflix ;-)
Now, disclosure and shameless plug. Body doubling was such a life changer for me that I co-founded https://workmode.net/ - basically body doubling as a service for chronic procrastinators. It's tailored to people who need it for work (basically full-time body doubling). If you want to give it a try - we have 1-click demo session.
For acute (non-chronic), mild procrastinators, Focusmate might be a good choice too.
For other methods, I recommend reading https://solvingprocrastination.com/
For example, after being diagnosed and doing some therapy and self-education, I realized that I interrupt people because I have shorter working memory. Now I have some steps I take to mitigate interrupting behavior (although I'm not perfect).
Also, if you're running a business targeted at people with ADHD, don't you think it's worthwhile to know if you think and experience the world in the same way as your customers?
As for the diagnosis - I already talked with psychologist about it, and yes, I'm going to go through the process. My son went through diagnosis of autism recently, and it also ticked a lot of boxes.
>Many developers with ADHD feel their job is a perfect fit for how they think and approach problems. “Coding can give ADHD brains exactly the kind of stimulation they crave,” explains full-stack developer Abbey Perini. “Not only is coding a creative endeavor that involves constantly learning new things, but also once one problem is solved, there’s always a brand new one to try.”
>In addition to a revolving door of fresh challenges that can keep people with ADHD engaged, coding can reward and encourage a state of hyperfocus: a frequently cited symptom of ADHD that developer Neil Peterson calls “a state of laser-like concentration in which distractions and even a sense of passing time seem to fade away.” It’s easy to draw parallels between hyperfocus and the flow state, a distraction-free groove in which programmers, writers, musicians, artists, and other creators produce their best work (occasionally while forgetting to eat). Our paid platform, Stack Overflow for Teams, is popular with developers in large part because it helps them avoid distraction and protect the productive sanctity of their flow state.
How much of the "hyperfocus" is just from all of the Adderall these people are popping--both those with actual ADHD, and those just feigning it to get pills from their Dr to boost their productivity?
If anything, it would seem like people with autism spectrum disorder, who can hyperfocus without popping pills, would be the perfect fit (and were seen as such 10-20 years ago). I actually wonder what % of SV SWEs (especially at FAANG) would lose their jobs, or wouldn't have gotten them to begin with, if Adderall didn't exist.
But if IQ skews lower, what explains the paradox between this traditional view and supposed ADHD concentration in STEM?
My working theory is that ADHD-PI is actually an autism spectrum symptom and skews higher IQ.
ADHD hyperactive is probably still clinically related to ADHD-PI, but I'd guess that the hyperactive expression is just enough outside of the spectrum to disconnect it from AS. And that the higher IQ related "symptom" is less likely to be present as well.
Possibly due to a less overactive visual cortex: the increased visual processing theoretically being related to the daydreaming symptom of PI. And the attentional fatigue that triggers the daydreaming being related to ADHD-PI as well, in addition to the possibility of it being related to AS.
Although I don't work in IT, I suspect that the presence of ADHD-PI skews higher than expected in comparison with the hyperactive expression.
It's like that post on blog options, and how a disproportionate number of blog posts are about setting up a blog.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...
>I didn’t realize how much of a psychiatrist’s time was spent gatekeeping Adderall.
>The human brain wasn’t built for accounting or software engineering. A few lucky people can do these things ten hours a day, every day, with a smile. The rest of us start fidgeting and checking our cell phone somewhere around the thirty minute mark. I work near the financial district of a big city, so every day a new Senior Regional Manipulator Of Tiny Numbers comes in and tells me that his brain must be broken because he can’t sit still and manipulate tiny numbers as much as he wants. How come this is so hard for him, when all of his colleagues can work so diligently?
The entire piece is worth reading.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-pharma-s-manu...
People react very strongly to this view. I have a theory on why that is, but won't rile you up even further by posting it.
I'm not trying to be controversial, but American pharmaceutical companies have started lobbying European countries governments to get kids diagnosed early with ADHD (as it is in America), and it's terrifying. Teachers are just letting it happen, because; surprise! little Timmy is so much better behaved now that he's on pills, and dealing with 30 kids is hard.
The pharmaceutical companies have taken a real disease, and spun it into a scam where they're pushing for wider and wider definitions for diagnosis.
It's happening in Europe right now, but it's more apparent for those watching because we're not used to this frankly evil practice over here. And it is evil, because you're essentially getting kids as young as five hooked on speed.