So I just finished my masters in CS and got a job as a junior software engineer. When I first chose CS for my bachelors, I did so because it was somewhat intuitive for me. But I wasn’t crazy about it. Thought the interest would grow over time. I’ve had undiagnosed ADHD throughout my life and thought the difficulties with CS during my bachelor’s (which took almost 7 years) was due to the ADHD and not due to lack of interest in the subject. Learned coping strategies and did my master’s. Graduated with a 4.0 GPA so I’m not bad at it for sure.

Now I’m medicated and I finally feel like I’m able to be 100% of myself. But despite that, I still just do the tasks at work for the sake of doing it. I like the problem solving aspect but it isn’t something I dream about every day. I see my mentor working in the same company live and breathe this stuff and I can tell there is a clear difference in the thought process between both of us. It’s easy for him to produce great quality work as he’s naturally curious about this stuff. Me, I just try to get it done. It’s not lead by curiosity for me. What grabs my interest is stuff like literature, history, linguistics, philosophy, sociology, movies etc. I don’t need any incentive for those things. I’m naturally curious about those fields.

Now I’m wondering if I should still stick with software engineering where I’m decently okay but not that curious about it . Or should I consider a career more aligned with the social sciences/humanities? I don’t even know what careers are in those fields that would be comparable in terms of pay/growth to software engineering. Is the choice between money and passion or can I have both to some degree in the non-SWE fields?

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    22 hours ago

    It is very easy to end up thinking about alternatives that are more desirable than the current one. Everybody has the novelty-seeking inclination but people with ADHD have it worse.

    When I switched majors to something I was interested in and that didn’t involve writing papers, for a while it worked but then I ran into the same motivation problems. To this day I know I can’t work a job that involves being at a computer, and I’ve only had one job (out of 8+) that I’ve held for more than 2 years- and even then, it was part-time and I put at most 1.5 years of full-time equivalent into it. YMMV though.