alt Hacker NewsI’ve never been diagnosed with ADHD but this comment hits home. I also struggle to juggle multiple tasks and I’ve had to build a lot of personal strategies to be productive at my job. Otherwise I’d stay scatterbrained and never get anything done.
Things like drawing small defined boundaries, understanding where and how to delegate, and forcing myself to “hyperfocus” on 1-2 tasks at once. My strategy with building revolves around offloading mental context as fast as possible and into sequential, modular pieces. It’s made me a much better systems thinker. However, because of that I also don’t really see the point in running more than 1-2 coding agents at once. Others I work with don’t relate and are trying to parallelize as much as they can.
Part of me is concerned that this way of thinking isn’t compatible with the new wave of agentic SWE and these skills will become outdated. Or maybe it’s actually all converging back and is more valuable than ever.
I honestly think it’s the latter. OP’s post is literally evidence of that. The “open twelve agents” is not only unsustainable (and leads to burnout) but fundamentally incompatible with building robust software. Sure, you can have agents fight it out, but at what mental (and actual cash) cost, and to what benefit?
I have not found myself less productive than my peers, but I have found myself less scattered across a bunch of different things. I do not think this is worse.
Also, consider reading about and/or getting tested for ADHD. You may not have it, of course, but I was diagnosed at 33 and it changed my life. Not because of medication (though I did that for about a year and a half, with success) but for a dozen other reasons, including being able to accept parts of myself rather than fight them, recognize (and reinforce) the coping mechanisms I’d built, recognize the ways in which it made me literally better than other people at certain things (some refer to ADHD being a “superpower” which it can definitely feel like at times), etc.
If you haven’t read Mark Suster’s posts about his experience with ADHD, read them - there are 3. If it resonates, consider talking to someone.
My email is in my profile; I’m happy to chat if you ever want. :)