A full-stack developer in Germany with 3.5 YOE was fired while on sick leave for burnout and was later diagnosed with autism and ADHD. They ask HN for advice on honesty about burnout in interviews, the impact of late neurodivergent diagnoses on career, and whether the German market for mid-level devs is in a freeze.
Background
The poster is a software engineer in Germany asking the Hacker News community for career advice after being fired while on sick leave for burnout. Three elements are needed to understand the responses:
- **Hacker News (HN)** — a massively influential tech forum run by Y Combinator. Its audience is mostly professional developers, founders, and investors, often blunt and skeptical. An "Ask HN" post like this typically gets frank, experience-based replies, not HR-filtered advice.
- **Germany's strict sick-leave & employment laws** — German law protects workers on long-term sick leave from dismissal, but employers can still fire them under certain conditions. The poster's mention of being "fired while on sick leave" signals a legally fraught situation that may color hiring managers' perceptions.
- **The current German tech job market (early 2025)** — after the 2022–2023 downturn, German tech hiring is cautious. Mid-level (3.5 YOE) is a tricky spot: too expensive for junior roles, not senior enough for lead positions. Neurodivergence (autism/ADHD) is rarely disclosed in German interviews, where cultural norms favor reserve about personal health.
Max Weinbach says he had early access to OpenAI's new model GPT-5.6 Sol, calling it his favorite model by far. He highlights that it never gives up and will keep reasoning until it's done. OpenAI announced that GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly on Thursday, with preview access expanding globally now.
The US government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all customers, citing a potential jailbreak technique that involved asking the model to review a codebase for vulnerabilities—a capability Anthropic says is available in other public models. Access was abruptly cut off on June 12.
Andrej Karpathy announces the release of Claude Fable 5, the same underlying model as Mythos but with added safeguards. He calls it a major step forward, particularly for long problem-solving sessions on difficult tasks, and describes it as state-of-the-art on nearly all benchmarks with exceptional performance in software engineering, research, and vision.
Roman Storm warns that the legal theory in his case could set a precedent making open-source developers liable for how others use their code, potentially criminalizing the mere publication of privacy, messaging, or crypto tools. He notes that developer Michael Lewellen cannot publish lawful code due to prosecution fears, and argues this chilling effect extends beyond any single case.
Meta's engineering culture is deteriorating under Mark Zuckerberg and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who have introduced keyboard tracking, reassignments to data labeling, and AI-centric performance metrics. Critics argue this incentivizes performative AI use, drives away experienced engineers, and contributed to a major Instagram hijacking incident caused by AI-written and AI-reviewed code.