Last week, a post on a niche subreddit for Indian Product Managers revealed what many experience but few openly admit, as one user wrote, “I lost my job because of my ADHD,” describing themselves as highly creative and capable of connecting ideas others couldn’t, yet ultimately unable to consistently finish tasks, and what stood out was not shock but exhaustion from years of “masking,” the act of pretending to function like a neurotypical professional in an unforgiving work culture.
According to Dr. Gourav Gupta, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and CEO of Tulasi Healthcare, the issue is not a lack of effort but a breakdown in regulation, as adults with ADHD often feel perpetually busy due to constantly switching between tasks instead of focusing on a single priority, creating an illusion of productivity without meaningful progress, a pattern that corporate environments frequently misinterpret as inefficiency or lack of discipline.
In India’s corporate hubs such as Bengaluru and Gurugram, these execution gaps are rarely met with understanding or systemic support, and instead are addressed through rigid mechanisms like Performance Improvement Plans, which often accelerate burnout and eventually lead to job loss, reinforcing a cycle where neurological differences are penalized rather than accommodated.
Many high-performing professionals with ADHD initially thrive in their careers because they develop sophisticated coping mechanisms, working late nights to compensate for distracted days, relying on adrenaline-fueled last-minute sprints, and masking their inconsistencies through sheer effort, but this fragile system comes at the cost of chronic stress and anxiety that builds over time until it inevitably leads to a breaking point.
The modern workplace claims to value creativity and innovation, yet measures performance through rigid administrative systems that disadvantage neurodivergent minds, and as Dr. Gupta explains, a key challenge is task paralysis, where initiating and prioritizing tasks becomes neurologically overwhelming, meaning that even critical responsibilities may be delayed while more stimulating tasks take precedence, a pattern often misunderstood as carelessness rather than a structural cognitive difficulty.
The Reddit post also highlighted a common resistance to medical intervention, with the user dismissing medication as something that could numb creativity, reflecting a widespread fear among creative professionals that treatment might diminish their edge, but as Dr. Gupta points out, untreated ADHD often leads to inconsistent performance, impostor syndrome, and eventually emotional exhaustion or depression, raising the question of whether avoiding treatment preserves creativity or ultimately undermines it.
At its core, this is not an individual failing but a structural mismatch between how neurodivergent brains function and how corporate systems are designed, as India’s tech culture demands professionals who are both highly creative and flawlessly organized, capable of constant innovation while maintaining rigid consistency, a dual expectation that is often unrealistic and unsustainable.
This Redditor’s story is not an isolated incident but a reflection of a broader workforce issue, where talented individuals are pushed to their limits in environments that fail to recognize or support cognitive diversity, and unless workplaces evolve to accommodate different ways of thinking and working, they risk losing some of their most innovative minds not because of a lack of talent, but because of an inability to adapt to the system.
