Ask HN: Neurodiversity/ADHD Friendly Companies

I'm ~40yo semi-successful full-stack engineer/hacker who had been recently diagnosed with ADHD (after more than decade of self-seeking journey and introspection). During my diagnosis I learned that ADHD is persistent in 5-7% in general population with some specialist speculating it's more common in IT due to hypnotizing effect of computers. I know I'm not alone with this :)

In hindsight ADHD helped me to get into current position. Being constantly bored, high energy, positive-minded solution and tool seeker is often good thing in times of crisis. When things go stale and there are no things to fix but only boring forms remains it's usually mortal battle with burnout, procrastination, self-doubt. One which usually ends with me quitting due to burnout or - rarely - getting kicked off because the next more boring thing took longer than anticipated.

Right now I'm on hiatus since couple last couple of weeks, but lack of direction and purpose is awful and with every morning I feel fires of restlessness growing.

Today I read recruitment ad about neurodiversity program which - supposedly - caters people with different neurodivergencies. Those were US on-site positions though and I'm in EU.

So getting to the point: Do you know / can recommend companies with neurodiversity programs?

For myself obviously I'm looking for remote or EU companies (with relocation) but even if you know something that's not in the region please feel free to contribute - maybe someone else looking will make use of it.

Obvious throwaway. Some half-truths embedded.

Not applicable to ADHD, but for Autism spectrum there is Specialisterne, a danish foundation that works with employers.

International: https://www.specialisterne.com/

US: https://www.us.specialisterne.com/

Specialisterne Foundation is an international, award winning social enterprise setting the “gold standard” for neurodiversity employment. Specialisterne was founded in 2004 by Thorkil Sonne after Sonne’s young son was diagnosed with the disorder, when he realized we should focus on the ability of neurodiversity: attention to detail, high accuracy, innovative thinking, loyalty and honesty rather than the “disability”.

> Do you know / can recommend companies with neurodiversity programs?

It's very easy for companies to set up something like this for the sake of appearances, I would advise against selecting your employer based on this.

If I'm to be 100% honest - I have no idea and thus I'm looking slightly to stand on the shoulders of the giants, who most likely know better than I do. Neurodiversity is... diverse. I could probably write a book about my experiences and they wouldn't match the next person with ADHD (at least not completely).

Describing the "perfect" organization for me that would probably be company that allowed me to switch between projects and technologies quickly while having "cleanup crew" in form of QA or an introvert who would be happy when not bothered.

The best employers/clients I ever had were the ones who had the silent "I sit and cut all the loose things" type of person, that allowed us to have perfect synergy, as I was frontman dealing with meetings, arguing on architecture doing the high-level designs and they were working on things that I missed (and there were plenty). I always - however - made sure they got recognition, both directly (assuring that if it wasn't for them I would progress at all) and in team environment.

Thus I think that if someone would be able to recognize traits that come with ADHD they would both help me feel better about stuff and could also juice more out of me (which I personally love, since I thrive in hard, legacy code with hundreds of engineering and business problems and IT is something I choose very consciously). This also comes with the fact, that someone has to recognize downtime and help me manage it, as ADHD is prone to obsessions and burnout, thus I quite often end up working 12h at 8h job while forgetting to go for lunch.

In summary - while I don't know it's either company that knows what they're doing and have a specialists for that, or company that would like to work with ADHD people.

Absolutely true, yet then at least I would feel at ease with myself if we agree to the terms. All cards on the table and I won't have to feel bad about myself because I procrastinated on filling 37.12 .xlsx files with the detailed diary about my work.