Hi Everyone,
I am going to just get straight to the point because if I don't there will never be an end to what I want to write so I don't want to come across as rude.
At 32 I was diagnosed with ADHD and Autism.
I have been obsessed with software development and code for 15 years, there isnt a second in the day where I am not thinking about it for this 15 years.
I have had 7 software engineering jobs and every one I just feel used and strung along and always have the carrot dangled in front of me and burnt out constantly due to giving so much but all I get in return is thank you so much for that...n thats it.
I am stuck in the same cycle, I start a job majorly underpaid, within 6 months the company says I am the best engineer they have ever had, I do 10x more than I am suppose to which goes from senior software engineer to running the entire IT departmen basicly alone, infrastructure, servers, developing new features, mentoring juniors to seniors. Developing all the software which no one else can develop and then the same cycle starts. You will get a pay rise soon, you will get a pay rise soon and it just goes on and on, people below me get promoted, I am still doing near enough all the work, i will write software which will save the company 1000's every year, and all I get is thank for tht, pay rise maybe next year. In the end I get made redundant because I basicly develop all the hard bits, save the money they need and then they get someone cheaper to just step in and do what i built.
I have tried so many times to get a new job that i want, one time over 60 interviews all failed. Why? I am so nervious I am sick for days, they ask me to do stupid live coding unrealistic such as my most recent one, I get sent a basic project it says code this live but this is not about making it work this is about quality this is about showing how you work with the other developers as a team. So i start, I do exactly as the instructions say, I try to involve the team looking at me, silence, I take my time writing very high qualty code, and then they will just say JUST MVP IT, i will panic, I dont know what to do, say or nothing thats the interview over for me. After this I will basicly be bed ridden for 3-4 days because of the amout that it takes out of me.
I recently tried to explain this to companies and recruiters and just ask for reasonable request of home coding, I will do any challenge thats fine and everytime I mention this it is very clear they back away instantly when I mention ADHD and Autism. This then leads me to go for jobs which are way below my skill level still senior but not the level I am at, I live and breathe it every second of the day. I then start a very underpaid job, they say I am fantastic and the cycle starts again.
At this point I dont know what to do, I get an interview set and I am panicing to the point of sick just to answer the phone and its always been like this. When, in the real job, I have zero nerves, zero anxiety, I drive everything, fix everything alone but when its artifical judgement of how well can you perform under a situation which is not even real I feel awful and fall apart and cannot help but not understand why they would do this.
If there is anyone who has the same kind of thing any help would be greatly appreciated
