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What are the best resources (if any exist) that serve neurodivergent and ADHD tech professionals with technical interview prep?

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Senior Software Engineer at Taro Community4 months ago

What are the best resources (if any exist) that serve neurodivergent and ADHD tech professionals with technical interview prep?

I’m finding resources very scant and I totally bomber my DSA interview years ago leading to lots of shame I’ve had to overcome and now going back into interviewing rounds which make me anxious so looking for more general help as I also learned only in the last 6 years I also have dyscalculia (dyslexia with numbers) even though I love math (geometry, statistics - anything related to machine learning and computer graphics has always been my fav). I hate standardized tests and get super anxious under time pressure for interviews with abstract questions that aren’t practical and often times get asked in such a way that I will solve the question in reverse and give the inverse answer. I’ve worked really hard to overcome this in my work the last 8-9 years, which I’ve been fine at, but when it comes to interviews I completely crumble.

I also ask this since even though English is my first language (born and raised in Silicon Valley), coming from working class communities of color, standardized testing has been the bane of my existence (even with almost perfect GPA), I crumble when it comes to these tests and find them very biased and feel the same experience for me when it comes to DSA, where I find a lot of bias in how the question is asked, and it’ll be so confusing to me that I’ll end up responding in the reverse. I also in the past was a professional writer (usually obsess about grammar), so I don't think the issue is me not having a grasp of the language, something just isn't clicking for me with DSA, where I've often thrived instead on take home projects, or for some interviews where they lock you in a room for a few hours and tell you to build a project, or have you work on the job.

I’m trying to also figure out if I need to ask the interview more subquestions to makes sure I’m understanding the question correctly so I can respond appropriately.

Any help is appreciated.

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Discussion

(2 comments)
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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    4 months ago

    I unfortunately don't know any but would love to help. Starting off: What gaps are you finding with existing DSA resources like LeetCode, GeeksforGeeks, ChatGPT, AlgoExpert, NeetCode, etc?

    If we can identify the gaps first, we'll be much better positioned to craft a solution.

    Tactically, I recommend leveraging the community as well with events like these (there should be another one happening): Taro Neurodiversity Coffee Chat

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    Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
    3 months ago

    There's a company called Shimmer that does ADHD coaching (we've talked to the founders).

    You can get a discount from the perks page: https://www.jointaro.com/perks/