Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
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Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
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Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#2Roughly 30% of people I work with at a MAANG have moderate to severe ADHD. Real ADHD, not some self-diagnosed or casual self-deprecation.
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#3Roughly 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.
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#4Roughly 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.
"Laughable" seems a little strong (as well as slightly rude).
I certainly think it's plausible that there's certain sectors that see a prevalence well in excess of the general population. And there's enough variance between companies that some will be even higher.
30% does sound rather high but "laughable" implies the person you are replying to has stated something so far beyond that that mockery is the only appropriate response.
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#5I 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;).
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
"Laughable" seems a little strong (as well as slightly rude). I certainly think it's plausible that there's certain sectors that see a prevalence well in excess of the general population. And there's enough variance between companies that some will be even higher. 30% does sound rather high but "laughable" implies the person you are replying to has stated something so far beyond that that mockery is the only appropri…
I already changed to "totally unrealistic" before you commented, but yes, I believe that 30% when the prevalence is at 5% for high estimates is so far beyond reality that it can be laughed at.
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#7Roughly 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.
While I agree questioning how he would know, we can’t use the general population metric and apply it to a specific population, in this case, software engineers who work at MAANG, or just competent enough to pass the interview
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a larger percent population of ADHD in MAANG tech vs in the general population.
But to try and counter myself, there’s typically a larger population of ADHD (or it’s permutations) in trade jobs (though I argue programming is a trade skill, just a new breed in our digital age. Though I digress)
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#8[flagged]
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#9[flagged]
ADHD-like symptoms are caused by a food allergy?
What might be some common foods that would cause this?
Re: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
#10I 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 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.