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Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

stackoverflow.blog

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Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#21

Post by nxpnsv »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #3
1letterunixname wrote: post #2

Roughly 30% of people I work with at a MAANG have moderate to severe ADHD. Real ADHD, not some self-diagnosed or casual self-deprecation.

> Real ADHD, not some self-diagnosed or casual self-deprecation. 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.

NBA players work in teams 100% great at shooting hoops, still the prevalence of that in the adult US population is tiny... what I am saying is that perhaps there is some selection effect happening here :)

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#22

Post by jnovek »

In my experience: yes, programming often pairs well with ADHD because it’s an ongoing stream of novel problems to solve.

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.

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#23

Post by bayesian_horse »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #3
1letterunixname wrote: post #2

Roughly 30% of people I work with at a MAANG have moderate to severe ADHD. Real ADHD, not some self-diagnosed or casual self-deprecation.

> Real ADHD, not some self-diagnosed or casual self-deprecation. 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.

OP may have sampled by asking. Or watched typical symptoms. Or seen medication.

I myself do suspect people of having the condition without being a hundred percent certain they have it or know it themselves.

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#24

Post by daniel-cussen »

dijit wrote: post #5

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…

[dead]

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#26

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

m3sh wrote: post #8

[flagged]

Sometimes I get worried about oversimplification on Hacker News. As a bacteria researcher, I know how complex health research can be. Unfortunately, some smart people oversimplify things they don't understand, especially in biomedical research.

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#27

Post by bogantech »

dijit wrote: post #5

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…

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...

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#28

Post by bayesian_horse »

spacephysics wrote: post #13
m3sh wrote: post #8

[flagged]

I agree certain foods can attenuate symptoms (I’ve gone on a year plus long elimination diet eating only a handful of foods, which helped symptoms), there’s certainly a “lower level” component to it as well. After the diet I don’t magically become more skilled at visual reasoning (think that’s what it’s called), or able to recite a story from start to finish without jumping everywhere. I agree though that the worst o…

I've heard and experienced that fasting or extreme ketogenic diets can help somewhat. Inflammatory foods probably don't help either.

But it would be wrong to say that the opposite, high carbohydrates or sugar, high inflammatory or whatever is causing "ADHD". At best similar symptoms but that's what diagnostics are for...

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#29

Post by brianwawok »

ryukoposting wrote: post #20
dijit wrote: post #5

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…

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.

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

Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone

#30

Post by Version467 »

spacephysics wrote: post #10
dijit wrote: post #5

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…

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 tas…

> 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.

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