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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

I have a pet theory that the role of old school sysadmins (what we refer to as DevOps today; yes Sysadmins coded, or the good ones did, I will die on this hill) was strangely attractive to those who would assuredly be diagnosed with ADHD.

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;).

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It affects your insurance? MORTGAGES? What the hell? In the US, the only external downside of ADHD is when you change doctors and the new one automatically assumes you're trying to swindle them to get Adderal, so they make you do another psych evaluation that will inevitably say the same thing as the last one. Defibutely doesn't affect mortgages. I doubt that it would affect vehicle licenses.

Friends of mine in various countries with adult diagnoses of ADHD have mentioned it has affected a whole bunch of things.

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.

> In the US, the only external downside of ADHD

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.

This is true for a variety of health problems. You need a doctor to verify it doesn’t impair your ability to fly a plane safely.

There are also restrictions on medications you can take and still fly a plane.

Being on anti-depressants is also a no-no as well it seems.

I’m pretty sure ADA stops companies from increasing rates for having a disability.

(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.

The part about driver's licenses is different nowadays, people can get exemptions from their doctors in most cases.

it affects vehicle licenses globally; with any psych diagnosis you're restricted to single engine VFR flight iirc

Seems important to double check yah? Vs randomly prescribe any medicine and person requests?

When the "double check" costs me $400 even though <new doctor> already has all my medical records including 60 pages detailing my previous psych evaluations? No, it's not important, it's completely superfluous.

Of course, but its an absolute pain when you switch jobs/insurers or move and have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get prescribed the drugs you need to get through those bunches of hoops.

Generally people with proof of a diagnosis and a current prescription get to continue taking their current prescription without any hassle.

Not so in the case, you might lose it for months if you move and switch doctors.

Life insurance is way more expensive if you have an ADHD diagnosis

I wonder at what point is XYZ job within tech better for those with ADHD, or is especially challenging.

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 wonder at what point is XYZ job within tech better for those with ADHD, or is especially challenging.

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.

It’s all fun and games until you also get a (micro)manager with the same ADHD, but always looking at the other squirrel

Oof, as a Sysadmin who strongly suspects he may have ADHD I guess I'll wait until I move back to Aus (from Sweden) before trying to get diagnosed...

If you feel you need the help, the downsides aren't that big. It's just when you switch insurance provider, they will ask about pre-existing medical conditions. This goes for everything, high blood pressure etc etc.

As an ex-sys admin, couldn't agree more with your pet theory. Many of us thrive when there's a sense of urgency ... but then can feel pretty unproductive during times of calm.

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