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Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

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Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#51

Post by adhddev »

Ruxbin1986 wrote: post #17
adhddev wrote: post #8

Backstory: I'm a senior engineer at one of the world's top 10 tech companies. I've had ADHD (and some kind of light Asperger's) my entire life, to the point where I couldn't concentrate on anything the first 12 years or so of my academic career _except_ for certain subjects that really interested me, like math. Some things that works well for _me_: 1) Good noise-cancelling headphones. I'm extremely sensitive to noise…

Is there a specific podcast, radio or band that you listen to?

@Ruxbin1986 There’re some great long-form (1-3 hr) techno channels on SoundCloud that works like medicine for me.

Just to name a few:

- Reclaim Your City - Slam Radio - PoleGroup - Scopavik - On The 5th Day - The Brvtalist - HATE - Owt - HEX Barcelona - KHIDI

Or these artists “guest sets”, regardless of channel they are posted on:

- Cliche Morph - Michal Jablonski - IGNOTA - Blazej Malinowski - Perc - Violent - Setaoc Mass - Lewis Fautzi - Amotik - Sept - Schlømo - Luigi Tozzi - Albert van Abbe - Oscar Mulero - Sigha - Randomer - Reflec - Joachim Spieth - Kwartz - Massa - Reggie van Oers - Ancient Methods - SNTS - Headless Horseman - Phase Phatale - Svarog - TommyFourSeven

And the list goes on and on. Hope this is useful for somebody.

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#52

Post by itronitron »

adhddev wrote: post #8

Backstory: I'm a senior engineer at one of the world's top 10 tech companies. I've had ADHD (and some kind of light Asperger's) my entire life, to the point where I couldn't concentrate on anything the first 12 years or so of my academic career _except_ for certain subjects that really interested me, like math. Some things that works well for _me_: 1) Good noise-cancelling headphones. I'm extremely sensitive to noise…

Thanks for sharing this, it seems like good advice for most people.

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#53

Post by itronitron »

johnisgood wrote: post #32
eanthy wrote: post #29

Every single developer I know has some degree of ADHD. I personally don't have it as bad but I know a colleague who literally can't shut up and stop moving and bothering us all the time. Honestly If the person is not aware of their condition I don't think you can do anything about it besides try to isolate and ignore them somehow.

Where is this place where they isolate and ignore coworkers? I would like to go there! When I was younger I always dreamed of a sysadmin-like job where I can do my own thing in the background without anyone bothering me! :D Now it seems like you need to be a social butterfly to become a software engineer or a sysadmin...

look for small to medium companies that do contract research and support work for the US DOD, lots of sys admin opportunities and lots of compartmentalization due to various rules and regulations

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#54

Post by seanwilson »

m0ther wrote: post #22

Get a prescription for Ritalin. Headphones and Spotify. Volunteer for EVERY nightmare project to keep you engaged. Learn HTML5 canvas. Learn SVG. Learn to make components in whatever framework you're on and get really good at it. Get into webgl. Make yourself the special projects guy. Go deep where others won't. Hyperfocus is your super power; research it, figure out what puts you in hyperfocus, and what keeps you th…

> figure out what puts you in hyperfocus

Can you explain how you figure this out? Any examples?

I don't have ADHD but I do notice some projects give me intense hyperfocus. Generally it's when it's some MVP or problem I start working on where it feels like I've happened upon an unexplored and potentially great idea - this includes there being lots of design issue to think about where there's lots of fruitful avenues to explore and prototype. My hyperfocus tends to end when I've explored the design space enough that I now have to step back and make tough tradeoffs.

That's the most I've tried to make sense of it. I know it's very common for people to get super enthusiastic when starting projects and then they lose steam when the fun stuff is out of the way so I don't read much into it.

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#55

Post by afarrell »

m0ther wrote: post #39
afarrell wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may have a significant advantage context switching for presales engineering and roles that deal with more unexpected runtime problems, etc. I would think the opposite: with lower working memory, context switching will be more painful and impose greater performance problems.

ADHD (at least in my case) makes context switching, and switching back, easy (it's a core symptom, this is the reason we have difficulty focusing). It's rare to hear one of us say "now where was I?". I equate it to the threading model; instead of a single thread, we have a main thread, and x (let's say 5) additional threads running in the background. Our scheduler is peculiar. We can swap the main thread for a backgr…

> ADHD (at least in my case) makes context switching, and switching back, easy (it's a core symptom, this is the reason we have difficulty focusing). It's rare to hear one of us say "now where was I?"

This surprises me because my own experience is one where I lack

1) the biological equivalent of an Instruction Pointer.

2) the working memory to hold both my previous task's information and my current task's information in my head.

So, if I have to switch tasks a bunch, I don't properly load the info for my current task into working memory.

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#56

Post by johnisgood »

itronitron wrote: post #53
johnisgood wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this place where they isolate and ignore coworkers? I would like to go there! When I was younger I always dreamed of a sysadmin-like job where I can do my own thing in the background without anyone bothering me! :D Now it seems like you need to be a social butterfly to become a software engineer or a sysadmin...

look for small to medium companies that do contract research and support work for the US DOD, lots of sys admin opportunities and lots of compartmentalization due to various rules and regulations

I live in Eastern Europe. Could you give me any companies I could try? Ideally in Austria, English-only.

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#57

Post by eanthy »

johnisgood wrote: post #32
eanthy wrote: post #29

Every single developer I know has some degree of ADHD. I personally don't have it as bad but I know a colleague who literally can't shut up and stop moving and bothering us all the time. Honestly If the person is not aware of their condition I don't think you can do anything about it besides try to isolate and ignore them somehow.

Where is this place where they isolate and ignore coworkers? I would like to go there! When I was younger I always dreamed of a sysadmin-like job where I can do my own thing in the background without anyone bothering me! :D Now it seems like you need to be a social butterfly to become a software engineer or a sysadmin...

any place where you have self-respect and principals

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#58

Post by itronitron »

johnisgood wrote: post #56
itronitron wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look for small to medium companies that do contract research and support work for the US DOD, lots of sys admin opportunities and lots of compartmentalization due to various rules and regulations

I live in Eastern Europe. Could you give me any companies I could try? Ideally in Austria, English-only.

You should look at Elastic's job postings, those are all remote and the devs I've met from there, while sociable, are not social butterflies. Also, Raiffeisen and several other banks have positions listed that may be what you are looking for. Most other companies that aren't startups will probably want German language skills.

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#59

Post by brailsafe »

seanwilson wrote: post #54
m0ther wrote: post #22

Get a prescription for Ritalin. Headphones and Spotify. Volunteer for EVERY nightmare project to keep you engaged. Learn HTML5 canvas. Learn SVG. Learn to make components in whatever framework you're on and get really good at it. Get into webgl. Make yourself the special projects guy. Go deep where others won't. Hyperfocus is your super power; research it, figure out what puts you in hyperfocus, and what keeps you th…

> figure out what puts you in hyperfocus Can you explain how you figure this out? Any examples? I don't have ADHD but I do notice some projects give me intense hyperfocus. Generally it's when it's some MVP or problem I start working on where it feels like I've happened upon an unexplored and potentially great idea - this includes there being lots of design issue to think about where there's lots of fruitful avenues t…

I think that's roughly similar for me, although it's not specific to a new project, often the opposite. Just something novel and I have some way to reason about approaching the thing. Sometimes this can even be parsing and contributing to legacy code. Design problems definitely fall into this, often being more difficult than any regular programming. I think it just takes some reflection on many different kinds of tasks, still working on it.

Re: Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer?

#60

Post by brailsafe »

burntoutfire wrote: post #50
m0ther wrote: post #22

Get a prescription for Ritalin. Headphones and Spotify. Volunteer for EVERY nightmare project to keep you engaged. Learn HTML5 canvas. Learn SVG. Learn to make components in whatever framework you're on and get really good at it. Get into webgl. Make yourself the special projects guy. Go deep where others won't. Hyperfocus is your super power; research it, figure out what puts you in hyperfocus, and what keeps you th…

> Get a prescription for Ritalin. Is there a study of effects of long-term, habitual usage of Ritalin?

I believe there are, and on others. From what I understand, generally not as hyperbolic results as get talked about. I've only tried a lower dose of Concerta, but I'd be curious to read some literature on the subject. I think if anything, the negative effects would come from abusing the short term gains and doubling dose, especially if you don't necessarily need it.
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