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.
Your boss sounds like a dick.
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.
Sounds like your boss was spouting some rubbish. Maybe they were having a bad day, but it’s no excuse for treating you like that (assuming — and I think it’s safe to do so — that you don’t have a history of repeatedly making this same mistake). Bosses are human too, but it’s still fair for you to be peeved about that.
Whenever an employee somewhere is apologizing to me (as a customer) for a mistake, I almost always reply “no worries, heaven knows I make my share of them too”. 🙂
Your boss is an arsehole and you are just human.
those with ADHD often struggle with making little mistakes, and often have to try even harder to avoid those types of mistakes
Regarding this; one of my biggest problems at work is the friction between knowing what I need to do, and doing it well. A large part of my job is to deliver training to the folks on the workshop floor. So in my head, if I don’t deliver adequate training, mistakes could be made. I work in the railway industry, so those mistakes could cost lives. The end result is it takes me weeks to put together fairly lightweight courses because I want to make sure they’re correct, and I’m hesitant to actually deliver them.
Realistically though, the training is more of a refresher, so delivered to people who pretty much already know what I’m telling them, but we’re duty bound as a company to ensure that health and safety knowledge is kept fresh.
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.
Always solid advice. We all have sore spots, so to speak, that bother us more when poked, but yes, always good to keep things in perspective.
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.
Wow, your boss was really being a prick to say that. The number of mistakes doesn’t signal degree of caring at all. People who think otherwise tend to be swaggering jerks who cut others down so they can feel big.
(Kudos on not full-out screaming at the guy, seriously. Condescension like that depletes my impulse control to basically zero.)
Code reviews, pull requests, sprint retros…these things exists because everyone makes mistakes like this.
This seems like the type of mistake any person could make. It’s about whether you try to be aware and fix the mistakes. Writing code is never perfect. Your boss is being overly critical here.
You’re boss is an arsehole. Everyone makes mistakes, especially little mistakes.
