Do you feel your can be open about it with a potential employer?
I do not. I have to tell them that i am 50% severely disabled because of legal reasons and benefits for them and me. So i just say i have autism
Yes, I did! I mentioned it when they asked about my downsides. Gave them all the downsides + the upsides of it. Like, I lose focus more than other people, but I am extremely calm in an emergency. I might have trouble planning but I think “outside the box”. In my field of interest, what happens to be my work, I learn quicker than most. I might oversleep, but when something needs fixing, consider it fixed. Even if I have to work all night. Also explained how I try to manage the symptoms.
ADHD is often seen as only negative but if you also take the positives, you become more valuable to outside perspective. Just stick to the real positives though, don’t try to make any up that aren’t there. They will notice.
I was the least experienced candidate from what I heard, but I was hired and looking at fixed employment in a few months!
I won’t hide it. If they feel I’m not right for an employer the way I am, they are not the right employer for me.
I’ve only ever done it after I was hired (and it was to get accomodations),
No and you shouldn’t. You should not disclose any information to a potential employer before a contract is signed and even afterwards you may want to withhold disclosing until after your probationary period or ever at all.
Employers don’t need to know personal health information unless you’re using it to request accommodations and the more information you give an employer the more likely they’ll somehow use it to fuck you over.
Modern employment is an adversarial relationship and if you think it isn’t you’re getting fucked.
Do not disclose disabilities before you are hired. You are under no legal obligation to do so. Disabilities are a matter between you and HR after you are hired.
Even after being hired I’d discourage revealing disabilities unless you’re specifically using the disclosure to request accommodations.
No. There’s no good reason to, and a few good ones not to. Chiefly, they could reject you and make up any other reason why.
Absolutely not. My employer has no business knowing my medical history.
Hell no. So many people think “it’s not real, you just need to try harder”, or they think “it’s real, so I need to look even closer for any mistakes or sloppiness” and develop confirmation bias
If you need accommodations, I would go through HR, and I’d probably wait until after the fact even if that weakens your legal protections
I might confide in my boss eventually, but probably by telling them without telling them - I’ll tell them my brain works in a weird way, that I need to walk to process information, that I need music/videos playing in the background because it actually helps my focus
Regardless, I’ve even been warned off by older co-workers (I failed a drug test for my meds, even though I brought the bottle) who said even if it’s illegal some people will try to get rid of me anyways
You should never confide in your employer. Employment is an adversarial relationship and people have gotten fucked over by bad bosses for disclosing things they really shouldn’t’ve. Only disclose information if it’s advantageous to you.
That bloody confirmation bias.
I was a model employee for many years. Every review was, “you’re one of our brightest, keep doing what you’re doing”. Then I requested some accommodations for my chronic migraines, and they put me under a microscope. Suddenly I was still getting the most complex work because I was the only person they trusted to do it, but now it was an issue that I didn’t churn through change requests as fast as other employees who only do simple bug fixes.
When I got diagnosed with ADHD I thought it would give me some breathing room if I told them. That just made it worse. Now I had to be on a management plan. Now every review was laser focused in churn rate, and completely ignored all my above-and-beyond contributions.
I think their long term plan was to either make me give up accommodations or leave, because they didn’t want anyone else thinking they could get “special treatment”.
Yup. I’m glad I had this cool as Caribbean co-worker who now and again would “teach me the facts of the world” when I first entered the workforce
The world ain’t fair, you gotta play the game. It saved me so much learning through failure - sometimes you gotta slow down so you have room to pull a miracle out of your ass. Sometimes you gotta play it close to the vest. Manage their expectations and they’ll be grateful, give them your all and they’ll only ask for more
It’s so very true. I add at least an hour, if not a day, before I commit something - unless it’s an emergency. Then I pull out the stops and drink a pot of coffee, and they worry about losing me, because my normal pace is enough that they get new features and when the chips are down and they’re losing money I’ll find fix it today, if not tomorrow morning
You have to know when to drag your feet, when to pull out the stops, and what you need to keep to yourself. They don’t care that I keep my mornings for myself, don’t come to meetings, and occasionally can’t be reached for a day… To then I’m a miracle worker, not a workhorse. They’re happy with my output, because I balk at anything that takes more than 5 minutes and under promise, then over deliver. But when they’re panicking, I tell them I’ll make it work no matter what it takes. And I still wait an hour if it didn’t take me all night
People beat workhorses to make them go faster, they fear losing a magician. Magicians are eccentric. They’re allowed to demand accommodations - but you have to keep up the mistique. Otherwise you’re just a flawed workhorse, because people are kinda stupid, managers and owners especially so
A workhorse seems replaceable, even if they’re better than the magician
It’s a learned skill… I’ve fucked it up in the past and broke the illusion by coming through too quickly once it became an emergency. But if you have knowledge they don’t, they don’t know what takes how long anything takes, even technical people. You have to play it up, because once the magic is broken for any reason, you’re now a lazy workhorse
Humans are fucking dumb. Manage expectations properly and reality is secondary, optics are everything.
Sounds like a shit place to work for. Hopefully, you found somewhere better.
It was pretty good before all that happened. I’ve moved on now though, because it wasn’t going to improve and the culture was generally going in the wrong direction.
They can’t discriminate against hiring you for the ADHD, but they can for anything else they feel like.
I only disclose it if it’s a job where I potentially may need some level of accomodation doing the job because of my ADHD.
It’s not something they need to know about, and certainly not something that should be specifically disclosed at an interview.
The only reason to disclose is if I need a specific “reasonable accommodation” from them to be able to do the job, and they indicate they are unwilling to make that accommodation without a formal request under the ADA. I won’t be making even an informal request for accommodation prior to actually starting the job.
