ADHD in Software Engineering: Overcoming the Challenges
Did you know that ADHD is so prevalent in software engineers that there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to ADHD programmers?
ADHD and Software Engineering: Why This Intersection Matters
While many with ADHD mask in their corporate careers, or may not even realise that they have ADHD at all, it’s undeniable that ADHD and programming have an interesting relationship. Having discussed the mutually beneficial relationship last month, today we’re going to deep dive into the unique challenges found by ADHD software engineers and the strategies and accommodations that make those challenges a whole lot less challenging.
Before we get into the details, today’s video is based on a 2024 paper called “Challenges, Strengths and Strategies of Software Engineers with ADHD: A Case Study” which looks at the lived experiences of nineteen ADHD programmers as well as the experiences of four managers.
The paper is split into three sections, strengths, challenges and strategies for dealing with the challenges. In my last post we covered the first part and looked into the reasons why ADHD and programming get on so well but in all good relationships, life would be boring if there wasn’t the occasional bit of conflict as well.
So today we’re going to look at the challenges that sit into this intersection, but it wouldn’t be a Through The Noise Coaching blog if we didn’t also look at what we can do about these challenges so that ADHD programmers can thrive. Without further ado, let’s get going.
Look how many tabs are open even for a stock image!
The Key Challenges ADHD Software Engineers Face
Deadlines, Estimation and Organisational Load
The study categorises the challenges into four main topics. The first being deadlines and estimations. They found that interviewees tended to overpromise on their deliverables by taking on too many projects and meaning they have to work much longer days or weekends.
In my previous post on ADHD, Autism and burnout at work the study I looked at also mentioned this; we tend to be people pleasers and struggle to say no which can lead to us taking on too many projects and I know from personal experience if I have a project that really doesn’t engage my brain, I’m going to have to take on something else otherwise that project isn’t going anywhere.
Another challenge on this theme was organisation and planning with just over half the intervewiees having difficulties with lack of organisation skills or difficulty estimating time. This organisation skills thing is a really interesting one because I also come across many ADHDers who are highly organised.
I have a theory here that I can’t back up, but most of the highly organised ADHDers that I know, including myself, are women and I wonder whether the social cost to women of not being organised is higher, therefore forcing us to develop organisational strategies to account for this. With globally 92% of software engineers being male there may be correlation here, if not causation.
Another theory I have is that it really depends on which part of our life you’re talking about and also what is going on in our lives at the same time. I consider myself highly organised and people have referred to me as such many times in my life. However, I can also be an agent of chaos when I feel overwhelmed and let’s just say that if you look at my desk where I work the word “organised” would not be entertained for even a second.
I had to suggest a Kanban board for something recently and shuddered…
When it came to dealing with deadlines this could be difficult due to problems estimating time, which I do relate to but I don’t really understand how non-ADHDers could actually do that because you don’t know how much time a programming project is going to take until you’ve at least started diving in, or also working towards a deadline instead of prioritising other tasks. Any neurotypicals in the comments, let me know please.
They highlighted that a lack of clarity or rationales is particularly frustrating. This could be things like not understanding the way of working at the company or goals or development tasks and just not having a clear why. This is something I’ve discussed with a few of my coaching clients at length.
To round out this topic there was also the mention of the out of sight, out of mind kind of thing where deadlines are forgotten about and also the fact that deadlines can cause stress and anxiety which is totally fair enough. What’s interesting about this last point is that when the paper spoke to the managers in the study about their findings around anxiety related to ADHD employees, they actually mentioned that this anxiety was a challenge fundamental to software engineering as a whole and not actually something they thought was specific to people with ADHD.
It’s often joked that ADHD is the human experience turned up to eleven, but in the case of some of the challenges I believe this might be more accurate than it’s given credit for. Stress and anxiety around tight, demanding deadlines is something that is felt by all employees, but when ADHD employees are dealing with extra challenges on top, it can mean that they become the canaries in the coal mine, struggling more obviously before their neurotypical colleagues reveal their own challenges.
It reminds me of a blog I did a few months ago looking at what we can do to make work more ADHD and Autism friendly and they mentioned about how having more structure and organisation was something that was beneficial to everyone regardless of neurotype but especially those with ADHD and Autism and this feels in the same vein; clearing up this lack of clarity and managing deadline stress better is beneficial to everyone. Not just ADHDers.
Focus, Motivation and the Challenge of Boring Tasks
The second challenge section was about attention to work with many of the interviewers complaining about tasks that were mundane or not interesting being incredibly hard to do. Yes. I agree. That is all.
About half the interviewees had trouble finishing tasks, some of whom mentioned lack of motivation and others feel like they couldn’t start something if they had a meeting coming up.
They also struggled with consistent performance, describing their productivity as spikey. This used to get me down a lot because I too have that spikey performance but I realised that when I’m in high productivity mode I get SO much done that it more than makes up for low productivity mode. I’m still coming to terms with the idea of giving myself a break in low productivity mode though.
The amount of energy it took to focus that first day back after the pandemic was extraordinary and I was so confused as to why it was just me.
Meetings, Open Offices and Attention Drain
Context switching and interruptions were also highlighted with half the interviewees mentioning they struggled to focus, particularly in open plan offices. Here’s one of the most relatable quotes to my early career:
“For someone with ADHD, open office is just a recipe for disaster. I couldn’t lsiten to music. I couldn’t concentrate on anything because it was so noisy.” Relatable.
About half the interviewees said it was hard to participate in meetings and found them hard to concentrate in and often a waste of time, another situation where improving things would be a benefit to all employees, not just ADHD employees.
Communication, Stigma and Fitting In
For topic three, ADHDers mentioned trouble relating to others, particularly if they were neurotypical.
They mentioned that neurotypicals struggled to follow their line of thought. I originally misread this and thought that it said that the ADHDers struggle to follow neurotypical lines of thought but the paper doesn’t say this and that would be ridiculous - we’re constantly trying to blend into a neurotypical world but are rarely offered the same understanding that we put out. So it’s not surprising that they also mentioned feeling like they did not fit in, should behave differently and also mentioned stigma.
Communication issues were also raised with people being considered rude or confusing for saying things unfiltered. Interestingly enough, they also mentioned having a difficult time with things like directing others to work overtime.
Health, Emotions and the ADHD Pressure Cooker
Finally, rounding out the challenges topic was health-related challenges. ADHDers unfortunately struggle with many comorbidities, some of which are caused by being in a world that doesn’t work for us. We have higher rates for depression, sleeping difficulties and substance abuse.
Four intervieewees included struggling with negative emotions on this topic. Two of them struggled with rejection sensitivity and for two managers they particularly struggled with dealing with the emotions surrounding having to tell a team member they were not performing up to scratch.
Finally there was also a lot of anxiety stated. Some of this was due to missed deadlines but it was also due to high expectations - we do tend to set sky high expectations and then struggle with impostor syndrome if we can’t live up to expectations that are often unreasonable.
So that’s a lot of challenges, and with all of those laid out this can feel a bit defeating. But remember, the reality is that so many ADHDers ARE in this profession and somehow despite all the challenges they’re finding ways to cope, to thrive instead of just surviving at work. So how do they do it? Let’s find out.
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How ADHD Software Engineers Cope, Adapt and Thrive
You will probably not be surprised to hear that the first strategy mentioned is of course medication. The benefits of ADHD medication have been proven time and time again, however it should be noted that not everyone can take ADHD medication for various reasons and medication doesn’t magically solve all your problems in life. So what else do we have?
Self-Awareness, Reflection and Externalising Strategies
I actually see it shared regularly, and this paper is no exception, that self-awareness is important. Just knowing that ADHD is causing the challenge and it’s not a fundamental personal issue is a huge benefit and recognising that ADHD is making this hard and responding accordingly is really important. They mentioned daily reflection and being patient as two strategies to help with this. As if any ADHDer has ever been patient.
They group a number of strategies together that they call “externalising” which is things like having a todo list which I’m sure is something you reading have extensive versions of. But also things like calendar apps, post it notes, general notebooks and things like that. Our brains are very full and trying to remember everything inside them is hard so I definitely have moments where I need to get things out of my brain by just writing it all down.
As they were also programmers, many of them built their own support systems using things like automation or processes and my entire business runs off a combination of automations and processes so this is definitely relatable.
It is a sick joke by the universe that I, an ADHDer, can’t drink coffee
Asking for help from others
Another strategy which I think is underutilised is actually help from others. And I know that it’s probably underutilised because of the whole ADHD is our responsibility to manage, which is true, but getting help isn’t a bad thing, especially if we’re giving help in return!
Help from others that was mentioned includes CBT which is interesting because I recently did a post on this looking at studies that suggest that if CBT is not done in an ADHD friendly way then it’s totally useless, so I’m going to assume the four interviewees that mentioned it got some nice ADHD friendly therapy.
Another method was body doubling which I subconsciously use all the time. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s working with someone in the same room even if they’re not talking or working with you. Use the fact that they’re doing a thing to help you do a thing. Because I would never go to bed on time if my partner didn’t get up to go to bed. They mention pair programming being a specific example of this.
Finally, coaching is explicitly mentioned by two participants and an accountability buddy by another. I could do a sales pitch for my leadership coaching here but I’d rather not so if you’re interested in ADHD friendly leadership coaching, it’s linked right here.
The next category was around clear communication and the interviewees mentioned using clear communication on their part to make others understand their challenges and what they were thinking. In fact, one interviewee even mentioned that multiple colleagues were diagnosed due to them talking about their symptoms which is really lovely.
Work Culture, Environment and Flexible Structures
The next few strategies were around how work can change to suit ADHDers a little better. Having had to work from home during the pandemic, I keenly feel this first suggestion to allow working from home due to the control over the working environment it enables.
I think this goes hand in hand with a second point they make about managing distractions. Being forced into a busy office can be a huge distraction whereas a home environment can enable control of those distractions.
But distractions don’t also have to be bad, there are “good” distractions that allow people to focus, for example listening to music or having controllable background noise like the TV quietly in the background.
Now this doesn’t hold for everyone’s experience but from personal experience when I had to return to the office after 18 months working from home I realised how unfriendly it was to my personal AuDHD symptoms. A noisy open plan office was too loud and took too much self-regulation to work in. At the same time I wasn’t really meant to use headphones and compromised with small in-ear ones instead of the big chunky ones I preferred.
I also was lacking good distractions. When I was waiting for code to run that might only take a couple of minutes I would get really frustrated at waiting that time at my desk but there weren’t distractions I could engage in to pass that time which overall led to productivity drops. When I’m at home I can listen to my music, I can watch my guinea pigs while I wait for my code to run or I can go and make a cup of hot chocolate. The environment suits my personal flavour of neurodivergence a lot better. You can tell I feel strongly about this one, can’t you?
Flexible work hours was another suggestion that was incredibly useful. That flexibility allows an ADHDer to work in time periods where they are more productive rather than trying to squish themselves into that nine to five (or longer) box where the amount of executive function it could take to try and work in that time is just too much.
Another change in the workplace would be adapting meeting formats to make them easier to follow and also just reduce the time. Things like meeting agendas, standing meetings or just making sure they’re short and disciplined can all be beneficial, again not just to an ADHDer’s attention but everyone’s attention span. And if the meetings do need to be longer, a fidget is a really simple accommodation.
When it comes to company policies and procedures this was also very important. Talking about neurodiversity and a general diverse workforce was important. But this also needs to be followed through by allowing people to work in a way that works with their brain instead of instigating policies that run counter to that, for example making people clock in at certain times or forcing people to use the same editor.
Several interviewees also mentioned the benefit of an executive coach and in that case, hi, I’m Leigh, and I’m a leadership coach specialised in growing the career of driven mid to senior neurospicies.
Going back to some personal strategies, knowing when to rest, switch tasks, outsource tasks or even switch roles altogether were important. Some of the interviewees mentioned that when you get stuck on one task, take a rest and do something else. Outsource tasks that are difficult or get help with them.
Is there anything more stereotypical for neurodivergence imagery than a jigsaw puzzle?
Person-Environment Fit and Choosing the Right Role
When it came to switching roles, the paper pulls out a couple of quotes that I want to share:
“Find the job that suits you, not every role will be suitable” and “Using your strengths where it’s needed instead of sticking you on a project that you’re not functioning well on”.
I’ve spoken about person-environment fit in a few posts and this is something I’m learning to be fundamentally important to ADHDers. If you don’t fit in a particular working environment, you are not the problem. It’s not that you as a person don’t fit, it’s that your environment doesn’t fit you. So change your environment instead of seeing yourself as the problem.
The final strategy was to adapt over time. If you’re adult diagnosed like many of the participants, chances are you’ve spent much of your life coming up with strategies that work for you. It could be a combination of tools you use in different circumstances that you can bring into your working life, or strategies you’ve used before that you’ve forgotten. But you’re a problem solver and you’ll find the tools that work.
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References
Stack Overflow Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone
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