It is one of my biggest pet peeves surrounding how people often misunderstand performance for someone with ADHD like myself. Of course everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but those with ADHD often struggle with making little mistakes, and often have to try even harder to avoid those types of mistakes. I care deeply about my work, and I struggled in my younger years with feelings of inadequacy, and when people chalked my mistakes or under-performing to some sort of moral failing, it really hurt. These days, through better understanding of ADHD, and how my brain works and what its quirks are, I don’t feel inadequate, but I still get angry when I encounter it. Don’t you dare tell me I don’t care about my work because I made a mistake.
For the curious, I did this in my code: {{ conditional }} instead of {% conditional %} in a Twig template by accident.
That’s also called a toxic workplace if there is a pattern of feedback like this.
If it is, and if you can, start looking elsewhere. Personal attacks over what should be mundane code review items is unacceptable.
If this was in formal code review, then that’s still a huge red flag. Code review is about catching errors, learning opportunity, and periodically style/cleanliness problems. It should be semi-formal, and does not include personal attacks like that. It’s a safe place to fail, and should be maintained as such, lest the productivity advantages be lost.
We all make mistakes. I’m a Sr. Dev & Tech Lead and just last week I had an obvious error that a Jr dev caught. It’s no big deal.
It can be easy to dwell on this, and think about over and over again. ADHD folks tend to have a stronger sense of justice, which means we are more sensitive to being “wronged”, and it will bother us for longer. All I can say is try to not let it bother you as much, it was unprofessional to say that, and minute mistakes are the norm not the exception.
No one writes 100% error free code, no matter how hard they try. That’s why there’s QA. If an organization does not have QA, they should be aware they’re tightrope walking with no net. I’m in a place that both produces books and software. With books, there is always copy editors passing over the authors’ work.
Everyone makes mistakes and even for non neurodivergent people it is difficult to spot some typos or syntax minutia. Rather than pointing at or blaming others, tests and code review prevent broken code from slipping into production.
You’re boss is an arsehole. Everyone makes mistakes, especially little mistakes.
Often people just say things they don’t mean. I wouldn’t take it too personally.
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole overthinking about one critical comment. Just be confident in yourself and have pride in your work.
Your boss sounds like a dick.
