#122 New Series: Things I Wished I Knew Sooner

A Guide to Being Late-Diagnosed with ADHD and Working in the Tech Industry

Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog for navigating the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.

I am an ADHD and product management coach, helping you change one belief and take one action each week.

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🦋 The Takeaways

Belief: Someone would have told me if I had ADHD.

Reality: Friends don’t diagnose friends, and our understanding of ADHD has evolved.

Action: Get assessed if you suspect you’re neurodivergent.

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Part 1 of the Things I Wished I Knew Sooner Series

⭐️ Introduction

Welcome to Things I Wished I Knew Sooner, a new series exploring what it’s like to be diagnosed late in life with ADHD as a tech worker.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be sharing the key learnings from my own journey—things I wish I’d understood earlier. I hope you can use my learnings to accelerate your own ADHD journey.

I’ll discuss topics such as what it’s like to be diagnosed, grieving the loss of a life you could have had if you had known sooner, coping with generational trauma, and what medications can and can’t do for you. Easy stuff, right?

Throughout the series, I’ll also bring in other professionals—therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, coaches, and more. On a selfish note, I want to get back into more of the science side of ADHD after spending the last few months focused on work-related topics.

To kick off the series, I want to talk about getting diagnosed and what led me there. It’s been five years since my diagnosis, and looking back, there’s so much I wish I’d known about what that moment really meant.

Now with more generational trauma and sass.

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😵‍💫 The Belief - Someone Would Have Told Me

For most of my life, I operated under a simple assumption: if I had ADHD, someone would have told me.

I worked at the UC Davis MIND Institute, one of the world’s foremost centers for autism, attention, and developmental disorder research. I was surrounded by people who had ADHD and other forms of neurodivergence. Surely, if I had it too, someone would have noticed. Someone would have said something.

I thought I was the only normal person in the room.

This belief kept me from ever questioning whether my struggles—with sleep, with focus, with relationships—might have an explanation beyond “I’m just not trying hard enough” or “I’m just a bad person.”

It never occurred to me that nobody was going to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Hey, you should probably get assessed for ADHD or some other form of spectrum disorder.”

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🤝 The Reality - Friends Don’t Diagnose Friends, and ADHD Understanding Has Evolved

I was diagnosed in 2020, five years ago now.

What led me there was my marriage. My wife and I were struggling during COVID, like many folks. We reached out to a marriage therapist, and in our first session, after explaining our challenges, she asked me, " Have I ever been assessed for ADHD?

That question caught me completely off guard. I worked at UC Davis MIND Institute—surrounded by researchers and clinicians who specialized in ADHD and autism. If I had it, wouldn’t they have said something?

But here’s the reality: friends don’t go around diagnosing friends. Even if someone suspected I had ADHD, it’s not their place to tell me. It would be inappropriate, presumptuous, and frankly, could damage the relationship. People might notice patterns, but they’re not going to risk offending you or overstepping boundaries by suggesting you might be neurodivergent.

Beyond that, our understanding of ADHD has fundamentally evolved. What we know now about how ADHD presents—especially in adults, especially in people who aren’t hyperactive boys disrupting classrooms—is drastically different from what was understood even 10-15 years ago. The stereotypes of ADHD didn’t match my experience, so even experts around me might not have recognized it.

I wasn’t the hyperactive little boy. I was the boy who constantly made careless mistakes on tests, was most happy moving, flipped letters and numbers while reading, and thought he was inherently broken or not trying hard enough. We now call that a combined-type ADHD with dyslexia and dyscalculia.

So I did the responsible thing: I reached out to a psychiatrist and got assessed.

Lo and behold, I had ADHD. That diagnosis started me on a road that has led me to today.

Here’s what I wish I’d known:

Having language changes everything. Once I had the diagnosis, I could finally describe what was going on. I could name the patterns, the struggles, the things I thought were just “me being bad at life.” That language made everything less confusing and less shameful.

You’re not alone. Realizing I wasn’t alone was huge. A lot of the shame and pain I felt, I thought nobody else experienced. But to know that I was part of a community, that other people were struggling just like me, made me feel a lot less alone. It made it easier to begin figuring out how to make my life better.

The journey doesn’t end with a diagnosis. I thought diagnosis would be the moment everything made sense. In reality, it was the moment I started making sense of things. The work of understanding myself, finding the right treatments, building better systems—that’s ongoing.

ADHD assessments are mostly behavioral questions. There are some other tests out there, but their efficacy is questionable (more on that in a future issue).

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🛠️ The Action - How to Actually Get Assessed

If you think you might have ADHD, getting assessed is worth it—but finding the right provider can be cumbersome and difficult. Here’s how to navigate it for US folks:

1. Start with Psychology Today’s directory (psychologytoday.com)

Search for psychiatrists or psychologists who specialize in ADHD assessments. Use their filter options to narrow down providers.

2. Search for remote providers licensed in your state

You don’t necessarily have to see someone in person. Searching for remote providers licensed for your state can significantly expand your options. This is especially helpful if you live in an area with limited mental health resources.

Use keywords that fit your needs and your identity:

• “ADHD”

• “Adult ADHD”

• “Remote” or “Telehealth”

• Specialties like “Immigrant, Asian American, LGBTQ+”

• Your state name (providers are licensed by the state)

3. Don’t be afraid to shop around

It’s completely okay to move between providers if you’re not getting what you need. Not every provider is the right fit, and finding someone who listens to you and takes your concerns seriously is crucial. If someone dismisses you or makes you feel judged, keep looking. I’ve moved around between different providers and learn something new with each one.

4. Remember what you’re actually seeking

You’re not getting assessed just to get a label or even necessarily to get medication. You’re seeking language to understand how your brain works so you can make informed decisions about what’s best for you. That could be medication, therapy, lifestyle changes, or nothing at all—but you can’t make that choice without understanding what you’re working with.

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✨ Conclusion

This series exists because I wish someone had told me these things five years ago. I wish I’d known that diagnosis wasn’t an endpoint—it was a doorway. I wish I’d understood how powerful it would be to simply have language for what I was experiencing.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll dive deeper into the different aspects of this journey: medication, therapy, lifestyle changes, navigating work with ADHD, and more. I’ll share what worked, what didn’t, and what I’m still figuring out.

If any of this resonates with you, or if you have questions about your own journey, drop a comment or respond to this email. I’d love to hear from you.

You’re not alone in this. And understanding yourself better is always worth it.

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⏭️ Next Week

What it was like for me to start medication—and the unexpected feelings that came with it.

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