Don't fear getting fired if you have ADHD | Hacker News Reader

Don't fear getting fired if you have ADHD

claimingattention.substack.com

15 pointsasoli19 comments

I don’t have adhd, but if I did, article left me hanging

Problem: “ American workplaces are typically designed for neurotypical individuals who are committed to a strict Protestant work ethic, expecting consistent focus and steady performance.”

Solution: “ Reflect on what drains your energy and what fuels you, and use those insights to find roles that align better with your needs.”

That advice literally can apply to anyone. The author is just telling me not to worry about losing my job, jobs come and go, etc. but losing a job is a big deal, it can be hard AF to find one. And now he’s telling me that “most” places are set up against how I’m naturally wired.

What am I supposed to do with that?

It would’ve been more helpful if author had included some pointers on types of companies or roles that are more supportive of people with ADHD traits. Or at least tell me about where he landed up. Give me some hope, vs leaving me hanging!

I think a better title and focus might have been “If you have ADHD, don’t get stuck ruminating about your career.” That’s good advice for anybody, but people with ADHD often ruminate too much, so it’s a double edged sword of having behavioral traits that can cause issues in your career and a brain that won’t stop ruminating about potential outcomes or actual outcomes. It causes more harm than good. And part of that is beating yourself up because the way your brain works doesn’t match with how the working world is set up for people with “normal” brains. It’s a bias people aren’t aware of at all and often ends up in some form of punishment instead of accommodation or empathy. And that gets your brain spinning on the whys and what could have beens and self doubt, over and over at high speed.

Of course, if you’re getting fired over and over, it’d be helpful to seek treatment in the form of medication and/or therapy. Those are hopefully within your control. Untreated ADHD is living on hard mode.

As an employee with ADHD, I found this rather unhelpful. Some of us do have to work for a living, and getting fired can have very serious consequences on our lives.

For a lot of us, avoiding (or increasing the likelihood of avoiding) being perceived by our employers as "lazy, careless, unreliable, or defensive" is often worth the exhaustion of trying.

yeah

>Regularly ask yourself: "Will worrying about this job matter two years from now?"

This is particular. I've never had a job that didn't matter to me.. why would i work if i did not have to?

As a fellow ADHD-having person, I get you. After some point, after dealing with multiple burnouts, you learn to detach your self worth from your job and try to seek other sources of fulfillment and satisfaction. It took a while to get there, but I finally did.

That doesn't make your job and your income any less important for other aspects of your life. My immigration status relied for almost 7 years on my employment. You can imagine how worried I was by the prospect of losing my job.

I am also an immigrant, and my residency status has just recently decoupled from my employment status. I can imagine, and am happy for you too :).

Thankfully, I never experienced proper burnouts; but I did experience multiple cycles of being really invested in my job and just barely pushing myself to pay the bills. I do think with time, and by experiencing more cycles, I am getting closer to striking a healthier balance.

I think you misinterpret the message of the article. I think the message is analogous to "don't feel guilty if you failed to obey the norms of behaviour", which does not mean at all that you should aim to break those norms and behave uncordial and inappropriate on purpose. You absolutely have to try your best, even for your own good. But for your own good, you have to have patience and empathy with yourself, too.

On another note, your perspective of trying to avoid being unemployed 3-12 months during job seeking is a rather US-American centered perspective. I get that HN is from the USA, but this view doesn't apply to every other region of the world.

I get that having empathy with yourself and not hating yourself in case you have to face consequences of having ADHD is very important and good. But I would argue that not fearing the said consequences is a very different thing; and likely not even productive/feasible for a lot of people.

I got the impression that the author is advising for the latter too; considering the title and statements like

>You probably won't change their perceptions, so don't exhaust yourself trying to prove otherwise.

Do you mean you actually work hard or just avoid getting caught being lazy? If you can work hard, I dont think you had an inability to do it in the first place

It is not a binary choice between these two.

If you have ADHD, and you need to work for a living; in time, you come up with personal strategies. I found that I am able to focus on things better when I am under a lot of stress or pressure. So I actively try to put myself into these kind of situations. Or, I found that simply sitting down, removing all possible distractions, and consistently forcing myself to do a thing does work; although with severely reduced efficiency i.e. sit down 4 hours, get 1 hour of work done with ~20 internal interruptions. But it does get done.

These are rather exhausting things to be doing all the time. So you always work hard at working. But you don't get consistent results. If you work harder at working, you get less inconsistent results. My point was that its often worth it.

I have ADHD. I would love to be able to just wish my worries away.

But I can't. It takes work... therapy, medication, exercise, trying to be mindful of the tools I have acquired through CBT and applying then where relevant. Despite all of this, one little thing is sometimes enough for me to fall into an anxiety pit. Ruminations then lock onto a source of worry, and that's it, I know what I'm going to be doing the rest of the day.

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with the post. That said, when my immigration status and my entire life as I have known it for 7 years relies on my employment, not to be anxious and fearful is hard. Sometimes there are valid reasons to be worried that go beyond one's worth in the workplace, and those cannot be rationalized away.

Really disagree with the premise of the post. I think being able to hold down a job has incredible value and allows other people to depend on you, both in your personal life and in your professional life.

I guess I'm not really bought into the idea that we should let ourselves be whatever we are, and that should be good enough. I think a huge part of the human experience (at least for me) is working to improve so that I can work better with other people. It's been a very rewarding effort even though I'm not excellent at it.

“American workplaces are typically designed for neurotypical individuals who are committed to a strict Protestant work ethic, expecting consistent focus and steady performance.”

In that case shouldn’t you fear getting fired as the next job will inevitably have the same issues but you will have to go through the hiring slog in the meantime?

Sure, getting fired isn't the worst, it's the inability to pay your mortgage that is suboptimal.

'Let them eat cake.'

you should think of not being able to pay your mortgage as an incompatibility of your finances and your bank's desires. it's not a personal failure on your part--ignore those stupid payments if need be

This was comforting because I have these constant worries but I think it's a false comfort.

> Your brain is telling you something important—listen to it

I don't trust it cause it's often wrong and sucks at prioritising. Sometimes, the stimulation an ADHD brain is looking for can be in form of something actively detrimental. If I "listen to my brain" in the moment, there's a significant chance I don't come out stress-free at the end of the day and instead become more anxious.

I'm all for increasing things in your life that you want to do more of. But that often takes doing things instead of giving in.

"ADHD traits like time blindness, limited working memory, craving stimulation, and sensitivity to rejection often clash with these expectations. Employers frequently misinterpret these traits as laziness, carelessness, unreliability, or defensiveness."

i loled at this.

Unfortunately, I disagree with the article.

You do need to fear. You do need to hide the disability during interviews, onboarding and performance reviews, day to day, etc. No one cares about you really - they care if you do do some work, are present or performance. If not, it's easy to be pip'd. Even if you do, still can be stack ranked and pip'd.

"My history of changing jobs used to make me feel like I didn't fit into society, especially before I understood how ADHD influenced my work performance and relationships." That's great, but it doesn't really help - saying you aren't the missing piece of the puzzle doesn't help someone that is diagnosed, undiagnosed or underdiagnosed at all - it just means you didn't - and the person whose reading this article can very much be aware of that but still proceed and feel as pariah or more as employers move to administratevely end your role.

"If you work full-time and have ADHD, you need to let go of the fear of losing your job. That anxiety consumes valuable mental energy better used elsewhere. Job loss isn't a personal failing; it's simply a mismatch between your brain and your environment. If it happens, so be it."

Job, is income and self worth - adhd and anxiety are usually diagnosed together.

"Getting fired isn't a reflection of your worth; it's about compatibility." Yes and no, depends on the job and role for many people, and in USA society, your job/role in soecity is a refleciton of yourself. You can write anything and say it isn't, you can state the USA has an unhealthy over work culture, it's still a reflection of worth to many people, refleciton of worth for self progress, promotion (right, you don't fit in and you still think about that.)

""Will worrying about this job matter two years from now?" It won’t. Jobs come and go." Unfortunately again, it does matter. Job provides $$$ and being fired can lead to joblessness for a year+. If you do not have other revenue/income streams, you're pretty much SOL.

The article is really empty, dry and lacks resources and any true call to action. Many people have ADHD and it doesn't matter if the author can accept it - and move on. Many people can not. Many people could've had their perfect job stripped because of ADHD. You can say as much as you want a door clooses and many more can open, but some doors are closed forever.

No article would've been better.

For any other HN'er out there, disabilities, even if they're protected by law - do not matter, the more weakness you show in an env, be it a workplace, society or internet the more fuel someone has to burn you with it.

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