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Help with Software Engineer interviews

J123

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

  • 40 years a software engineer and have been in exactly the same place as you, to the point where at one stage I looked at entirely different careers...

    ... and that's a good place to start talking about it. Software engineering is not a career. It's a trade. Like plumbers or electricians. The more skilled and experienced we get, the more we are worth. But there is nowhere to promote us to. We don't belong in management because it's an entirely different skill set - particularly people skills. We have neither the vocation nor the inclination. If we'd wanted to work with people we wouldn't have taken the choice in the first place to work only with machines.

    Try working as a freelance contractor. You do an hour of work and get an hour of pay, and there are no strings attached - no expectation of loyalty in either direction, no bonuses to be promised or denied on a whim, no being moved to other projects which you're not interested in (bear in mind that as a contractor you're hired to do a specific piece of work that they need doing, and it is never cost-effective for them to move you off that piece of work - they will always shunt one of their staff onto it instead!), and most importantly for me as an autistic person, no expectation to fit in socially. I can be as (to use a neurotypical term) weird as I like, because they want a job done and all they want is someone who can do it, even if they would never consider hiring that person on staff.

    Contractor interviews are different. Generally there are none of the tech tests that you would get with the staff job. You give them your skill set, they trust you, and if it turns out you can't do the job after all, they can kick you out at short notice at very little cost to themselves (as opposed to the large outlay in terms of both time and money that it costs them to have to onboard staff members and then serve them notice when they don't work out). 

    You may have to beef up your skill set. Focus on the skills that companies need - specifically the transferable ones. Python, SQL, Linux, AWS, stuff like that if you're a backend developer. 

    I don't tell them I'm autistic at the interview stage. They don't need to know. All they need to know - if any of it comes up - is that I'm machine-facing and not people-facing, that I vastly prefer remote working, that I am extremely focused, and though not gifted at multitasking I have structured methods in place to park one task and pick up another. Once I'm in the job, if I run into people who need to know (especially if it can help them) I might mention it, and often in an oblique way e.g. by saying in a certain situation 'I'm sure neurotypicals wouldn't do it that way', and seeing if they get it. 

    Good luck.

  • Good morning from America, J123!

    Okay, so the way I walk into an interview is I try to convince myself that the people interviewing me want me to succeed. Generally employers don’t want the people they interview to fail. If you get into that mindset, you may be able to reduce the pressure on yourself. Because otherwise, if you fear that they want to see you fail, you might psych yourself out.

    As a side note, when I worked in IT for a few years I was hit with the same problem. I was taking on enough work that my manager said I was underpaid at least $5 per hour, but management above him were completely unwilling to pay me more. So I left, because I wasn’t getting a living wage at all. That’s weird that you’ve had the same experience, that makes me think IT is just like that.