This is slightly tangential to your questions, but to address the "remembering details about your past work", I've long-encouraged the developers I mentor to keep a log/doc/diary of their work.
If nothing else, it's a useful tool when doing reviews with your manager, or when you're trying to evaluate your personal growth.
It comes in really handy when you're interviewing or looking for a new job.
It doesn't have to be super detailed either. I tell people to write 50% about what the work was, and 50% about what the purpose/value of the work was.. That tends to be a good mix of details and context.
Writing in it once a month, or once a sprint, is enough. Even if it's just a paragraph or two..
Yeah, my resume does include a summary of what I did each job, but it sounds like the brag doc idea would involves much more detail.
Honestly, putting those details in writing in a way that I retrain after leaving might leave me vulnerable to claims of violating my corporate NDA. But legalities aside, yes, it would help with these kinds of interview issues - prospectively only of course, not retrospectively.
Annoyingly, it's also exactly the kind of doc that's difficult for people with ADHD to create and maintain rigorously, even though people with ADHD are more likely than average to need the reminders of those details. A lot of ADHD problems are that kind of frustrating catch-22, especially when interacting with a world that is largely designed around more typical brain types.
Got it.. I will admit to being unfamiliar with the challenges of ADHD so I apologize if my suggestion appeared to disregard said challenges.
If I can ask a follow-up question: Is it the act of writing it down, or the whole recall aspect of it that is challenging? Or something else?
I've personally starting using audio transcription with a voice recorder to capture ideas more easily when I'm not at my computer (I hate typing on my phone keyboard) and that has made building these kinds of diary/log/notes documents a lot easier because I can just speak my ideas into the recorder whenever it is convenient for me, instead of waiting until I'm at a computer.
one of my buddies was a navy psychologist assistant. was a corpsman (navy medic) who moved that way.
dude maintained a "me wall" of achievements, commendation medals, etc. plus a file full of other crap. he mentioned he got a lot of promotions because you have a section to fill out where you describe all the shit you did over the least year, and he always came with examples...
If nothing else, it's a useful tool when doing reviews with your manager, or when you're trying to evaluate your personal growth.
It comes in really handy when you're interviewing or looking for a new job.
Julia Evans calls it a "brag doc": https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/
It doesn't have to be super detailed either. I tell people to write 50% about what the work was, and 50% about what the purpose/value of the work was.. That tends to be a good mix of details and context.
Writing in it once a month, or once a sprint, is enough. Even if it's just a paragraph or two..