Debugging My Life as an Engineering Manager With ADHD
I was always a software engineer first and never planned (or wanted) to become a manager. Dealing with software seemed much easier than dealing with people. Working on hard technical problems felt natural, but dealing with emotional matters and nuances in communication always bothered me.
However, when I co-founded my previous company, among other things, I became the manager of an engineering team.
Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?
Initially, it was a mad rush to get the product out the door, so I didn’t sweat the details. Eventually, though, things settled down as the business side of things started growing, and we needed to “move slower to be faster.”
Still, working on the product and engineering side was extremely rewarding. The complexity of the problems we had to solve, the architectural choices we had to make, and the scalability issues we had to address kept us busy and required a lot of creative solutions.
With the help of my co-founder, I realized that I had to shift my focus from engineering to managing the team. This wasn’t obvious to me until we struggled with staying on the same page and ensuring everyone knew what and why they were working on their respective projects.
I needed to establish a sensible structure around how we plan, discuss, and agree on work on a weekly basis. I also had to create an environment where people felt heard and wanted to stay and do their best work despite a ton of constraints. I didn’t know how to do this, but I knew that’s what I wanted for myself, and I wish I had from managers I worked with in the past.
I knew what it was like to be part of a team where people didn’t understand why they were working on the tasks assigned to them and where communication always felt uncomfortable and unproductive. It’s demoralizing, and I didn’t want that for my team.
Soliloquy of Chaos
As I started hiring and managing more people, I quickly found myself having to constantly write down everything in a notebook to keep track of things that were mostly happening in a bunch of separate tools. I’ve never been great at taking notes or even organizing the ones I took, so between stacks of notebooks and a bunch of reminders, I tried to stay on top of everything.
Without this sort of system, it was very easy for me to forget things. I might overlook helping a team member with an employment document they needed or fail to reorganize tasks so someone else could take a break. More importantly, I might have not prepared properly for one-on-one meetings or remember anything from our previous conversations.
That setup kind of worked for a while, but I found that it never really helped me be more organized as a manager or track feedback more efficiently. I tried to educate myself about management in general, but I didn’t find as much useful information as I expected, so I assumed that I was just bad at this and should suck it up.
Most of the stuff I found was around team structures, or it was very basic advice on running 1:1s. I wanted to learn more about the systems people use to keep track of everything related to team members, not just development. A lot of the writing was either irrelevant (“how to design a performance review system”) or just rehashing common sense approaches (“have your 1:1s regularly and let the other person speak”).
Most of the time, my goal boiled down to appearing calm in front of the team, like somehow I had my shit together and make sure that they could rely on me. However, that didn’t work well in other areas of the business.
I frequently argued with my co-founder and dreaded our Friday catch-ups. Fridays were dedicated to planning for the following week and setting priorities, but I couldn’t step back. All my effort and mental energy was spent on trying to organize myself and avoid forgetting anything or missing any details. My mind was never focused on the future, not even the near one. I would arrive at our meetings truly unprepared, with zero ideas, despite feeling like I was working as hard as I could. Problem solving on the spot can take you only that far.
I also was not great at communicating, constantly rushing things, making too many assumptions before verifying anything and optimizing for getting things done. It was pretty frequent for me to send a one-sentence reply to a customer question or just answer “no”/“yes” to questions on our Slack. That would trigger lengthy threads between people trying to get more information from me or understand the context of my responses. It was an unnecessary waste of time for everyone involved.
I was often told I needed to have more empathy, but I felt I had it. That was very confusing — after all, I felt like I cared so much about everything, all the time.
Waking up in the morning and seeing several unread notifications on the support app icon was enough to make me anxious. To cope, I would detach myself from the emotional side and focus on execution, removing blockers and doing anything in my power to move the needle in the right direction.
My lack of organization and planning was taking a toll not only on my professional but also personal life.
At times, I would realize that two months had passed since my last conversation with my parents, and I’d get text messages from them being worried that I disappeared again. This fluctuating attention strained all my relationships — especially close ones.
Flip the script
My wife told me I needed to get some help, so I went to therapy for the first time. The therapist suggested I get evaluated by a psychiatrist, but because it was just the beginning of the pandemic, all appointments were short and done virtually.
At first, I dismissed the diagnosis I received. I was convinced it had to be something else, and surely I was able to fix whatever problems I had by myself. I stopped therapy after a while because the benefits of it would diminish very quickly. I didn’t see real progress.
With a lot of hard work, executive coaching, and making Todoist effectively run my life, I managed to get things somewhat under control. I developed systems around managing team communication.
I ditched the notebooks and worked on revamping our product and engineering processes. I set up reminders for every critical task that needed to be done. I ensured that important meetings weren’t rescheduled unless necessary, and if anything required my input or action, it was either handled right away or added to my to-do app for frequent review.
Deliberately slowing myself down in conversations and speaking only when it made sense required a lot of effort, but it started to pay off. I saw the team shipping faster than ever. Everyone was clear on what we were doing and why. I saw people genuinely happy with their jobs and truly committed to what we were building. I felt more in control of the business and more comfortable with what was expected of me.
Unfortunately, it all came at a cost: even though the team was doing better than ever, every day was draining for me. I felt incredibly tired by the end of each week, with little energy left for anything else.
Above the Clouds
Eventually, we did the impossible: our startup really took off, our five-person team (!) kept delivering quality work at a great pace, all while being distributed across three continents and four time zones. That led us to sell the business in 2021.
Something still wasn’t right, though. Successfully exiting a business is something that should be celebrated, but for me, it felt like I was a background character that didn’t have much involvement. I felt numb.
Now, as part of a bigger company, my responsibilities changed, and I found it really hard to work in an environment where I was not setting up all the structure and didn’t have the authority required to coordinate initiatives effectively. I had to adapt to someone else’s system, which I found ineffective and frustrating. The new way of doing things was not designed for autonomy or psychological safety. I didn’t know how to work without those two things.
It’s very hard for me to work in an environment where “no” is the default answer, and making any change is nearly impossible due to the inflexibility of the system.
My mental health was declining with every passing month, and it was affecting my marriage to a concerning degree. I tried therapy again, with three different therapists. The sessions would bring short-term relief and increased motivation for maybe two weeks, only to fizzle out, and I would find myself back to my old ways even when I was having sessions weekly.
My third therapist suggested a more comprehensive evaluation based on our sessions. After more than three hours of appointments with a psychiatrist, everything clicked: at the young age of 39, I was diagnosed with ADHD inattentive type.
Moment of Truth
Once I sat down to think through the implications of that discovery, I realized how much my ADHD and the need to work around it had influenced how I run the team, the product, and my communication with others.
Out of a sense of survival, I built self-reinforcing systems and feedback loops. Alerts, reminders, four-way syncing calendars, and testing a ton of productivity apps. I had effectively outsourced a lot of my executive function to be able to do what neurotypical folks just do on a daily basis, without much effort.
In retrospect, what I found the hardest was managing people: being prepared for conversations, not missing any meetings, making sure our planning ran smoothly, and that all conversations I had were meaningful and led to positive outcomes even if they were tough to have.
Hard things are hard for sure, but I always felt like I’m playing Street Fighter on the highest difficulty level, using a Guitar Hero controller. And now it all makes sense.
A Long Way To Go
Now that I’ve been taking medication, combined with this newly gained knowledge, it has been a truly life-changing experience. All the systems and routines I’ve built over the years have been elevated, and self-compassion has allowed me to embrace my differences. Still, “pills don’t teach skills,” so there’s a lot to be done.
Every day I work on increasing my self-awareness and, at the same time, on being kinder to myself. There is power in knowing you are not alone, and there are people out there struggling just like you but making shit happen regardless.
If any of the above resonates with you, but you haven’t been diagnosed, I encourage you to get an official assessment by a psychiatrist. A thorough assessment, not a 15-minute Zoom call. I spent a lot of hours with a therapist and a psychiatrist making sure this was indeed ADHD.
If you have been diagnosed, then know that it gets better, and if you are an engineering manager, you can be a great one.
On a personal level, I’m focusing on strengthening my close relationships, and I continue to optimize the systems I used to make sure I spend enough time being present and less overwhelmed. I’m more optimistic than ever.
From a professional standpoint, after years of trying and using a ton of tools for running all sorts of meetings and reminders, I decided to go build another startup. We live in a world full of distractions, shifting priorities, and information overload. Whether you have an attention deficit or not, it’s always beneficial to automate the tedium, minimize noise and increase the focus on the really important things like building connections with people and making sure they’re heard.
Thank you for reading!
If you are an engineering manager and any of the above resonates with you, whether you have ADHD or not, I would love to chat about what I’m building and learn from your experience. Your feedback would be extremely helpful. If you are interested, please pick some time here.
I would like to thank all the kind people that helped out and reviewed various drafts of this article, including the fine folks that hang out in the #adhd channel on the Rands Leadership Slack.
