This is the main reason I quit freelancing. Working 3-4 hours was great. Money was decent. There's groups for freelancers and solopreneurs and such. But they're not on your side, they're just peers.
Eventually I think life stagnates. Working for a unicorn had its downs, but there's just something about working with people smarter than me. One thing I just hate about social media is having to explain everything. HN seems to get me, but not quite. In a top tier tech company, there would probably be 6 or so people who have done the same thing you're doing. And you can just sit around for hours debating the best way to design a table to store currencies and be paid a good sum for it. We can talk about insane things like testing in production, getting rid of feature flags, getting rid of documentation. Or just dumb things like Wordle solving algorithms. Someone will not only get it, they'd indulge you on it. But you'd need to hire some of the smartest people in a region and force them all to join the same Slack.
Same. But I guess I’ve just accepted it and moved on. I’m willing to give that up for not having to give up 75% of my wake hours to a purely economic entity.
I think I’m mostly surprised that so many smart/capable/successful people keep grinding long after they need to. And I’m sad that those of us that don’t have a harder time finding eachother because we don’t have a common career to put us in a room together constantly.
Ah well. Wouldn’t trade any of the great adventures I’ve had for a job or a large sum of money. I’m happy with my trade.
I can relate, not sure what to do about it besides move to a hacker house in Thailand or such.
NPR's show 1A had a program on loneliness. There were a couple of interesting things: these days university cafeterias are quiet because everybody eats alone while looking at their phone. A Gen-Zer complained they 2 jobs and no time to socialize. On top of that, our third places are being ruined with hostile architecture (parks), or uncomfortable seating (Starbucks) because they want you to just do a mobile order and get out. Seems like the Internet should at least be a good third space, its called cyberspace after all, but at least idk how to get invited to the right discords or tiny social spaces where there's community.
Starbucks actually does not want you to just do a mobile order, it's often cited as a reason for their lowered sales. This is a rather long podcast interview with Howard Schultz so search for the line "Ben: Of course. All right. While we’re in technology land, I think today 33% of Starbucks orders are done with mobile order and pay." and you'll see where that conversation about mobile ordering ruining third places exists.
They literally removed all tables and chairs inside my local starbucks. There's a standing bench only. It's a huge Starbucks, lots of empty floor space right now. Nowhere to sit. They seem to want you to order and gtfo.
If they want people to come in and sit down why have they removed all tables and chairs?
The following isn't my local Starbucks at all but the link has pictures of what many Starbucks look like inside right now. I don't live in a high crime or high homelessness area at all (not near any big city) and they removed all seating from multiple local Starbucks in the past few months (they are clearly leaning into doing this more not away from it).
> Kyle Trainer, a barista at the location, said he believed Starbucks eliminated seating due to homeless individuals and people with mental illnesses around the neighborhood. He added that Starbucks does not adequately train team members to manage stressful situations and that the chain would rather “remove the seating, close the bathroom and not deal with it.”
Being in SF versus other cities and suburbs very likely has something to do with it, I'm not sure where you live but they're apparently bring back more furniture as cited in a link in my other comments. But who knows, maybe they're prioritizing bringing back furniture based on many factors.
Your link is broken. I do know that Mr. Schultz has given lip-service to the fact that Starbucks is no longer a third place, but in the other column I present the fact that there are no longer any comfortable chairs at my nearest Starbucks and the next one by distance is Drive-Thru only.
Updated my comment with the original source. What kinds of chairs are those? Maybe it's me but I found my Starbucks pretty bustling, people gathering, the chairs fairly comfortable for even long periods of time working on a laptop for example. Hell, we even have several single seater couches and that's been fairly standard since I can remember.
When I was in a suburb we still had that sort of seating, and I recently went back and I see those couches still. Maybe they don't put them in new stores, I'm not sure, but I don't think they remove them if they're already there. These are the kinds I'm talking about and seeing [0].
Another source on couches returning [1], maybe in the suburbs too.
Restaurants are about increasing transaction volume above all else, especially at smaller dollar amounts. Second order might include things like average cost of servicing each transaction.
The architect Christopher Alexander has this pattern in "A Pattern Language" called "Home Workshop". (Summary: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/christopher-alexanders-arch...) Roughly, the idea was that if you can walk around your neighborhood and see different people working at their professions, the wholeness of the neighborhood increases. It comes more alive. Children imbibe a more realistic sense of what different professions involve. Professionals are connected to the world as they create. I try to keep this in mind. As our world has grown more digital, this consideration was one of the reasons I created this devlog last year: https://akkartik.name/freewheeling-apps
I feel this. I think loneliness has been the principle feeling in my life forever, whether I'm with people very different to myself or like-minded. Lack of connection == lack of purpose, and that makes every action more difficult.
Piers Steel researches motivation and has a book called "The Procrastination Equation". In the book, motivation is modelled as Motivation = (Expectedness * Value) / (Impulse * Delay). In his academic papers, it's rendered as:
Utilityᵢ = (Eᵢ Vᵢ) / (Γᵢ D)
That is, the perceived utility of any action increases with the expectancy that one will be able to finish it, and the perceived value of the end result, and is reduced by a person's inclination to be impulsive or distracted and the end goal's distance from the present.
How can any action have utility if someone has no place in the world? As a social species, our purpose is largely defined socially. When you're going solo, it's hard to get a sense of value of a given action.
The main thing I'm missing at the moment is learning by osmosis from people with more experience. Learning stuff that I didn't know I didn't know. Mentorship.
Something I've been doing for general feedback is keeping my friends updated on what I'm up to and asking for their perspectives. There's a bit of a balance though cause you don't want them to associate you too strongly with your work and bring it up whenever you see them.
If you mean technical feedback then yeah not being surrounded by other engineers you can bounce ideas off kind of sucks...
Not sure how sporty you are but I have a pretty fixed weekly routine where I do sports with my friends some nights after "work" and I've found that great for forgetting about my project and pulling me away from the computer at a reasonable hour.
For loneliness during the day I've found working somewhere busy helps, like a library. Maybe a nice way of framing it is that you can't get distracted by coworkers if you don't have any :)
I can relate on the one hand but I also have a potential partial solution for you.
Early on, one of the choices I made as a solo founder was to put a note under my products asking existing customers to contact me for a loyalty discount.
This could’ve been automated of course, but now I routinely get emails from customers and they constantly say kind words about the software, make suggestions and provide encouragement.
Plus you can see their email signatures and links to understand who your customers are. You can ask them questions, even working collaboratively. You start having regulars who reach out.
It helps a lot because it creates a better sense that what you’re building is actually a part of people’s lives.
I was the only developer in a 4 person startup. we'd go to board rooms and talk about how great the software we were building was, and all faces would turn to me and be like 'oh yeah, and how is that software we're all here to sell coming along now?' Not only was it 'lonely' but all the actual pressure to produce the product was on me. I would never want to go back to that state ever again. Now I still work remotely but there is a decidedly social component to this job because I'm not the only developer. I'm one of 34.
Not going to lie, this is one of the few reasons I use LLMs at all. Even if I feel like I have a decent idea if I don't have anyone around to listen I'll just lob thoughts at an AI just to ask for alternatives, dissenting opinions, critiques, etc. Typically much of the output are things I already considered, but even that can be validating itself as a sort of reminder that I did think things through. And on some occasions it does raise things I wouldn't have considered which can be great to stop and chew on before proceeding.
How do you reconcile the fact that LLMs can be pretty fair-weather? Meaning, while they can serve as a sounding board and often raise perspectives you might not have thought of, they don't have much conviction and will change their tune if you push them in the other direction enough.
My approach is to compliment the LLM on something I've not thought of and ask it to sell me on the approach, expound on its position, and ask probing questions. If I get a feeling something's off I just go do independent research like normal.
In my friends group we regularly go coworking together. Sometimes we close our laptops and go get dinner or drinks after work. We are vaguely aware of what everyone is working on because we rant about it and ask each other for help. I use them for informal UX testing.
I also have a small audience on social media that lets me work in public. They are very supportive.
I've actually thought about doing this - everyone works remotely from the day - from one of the group's houses. It sounds like something that would benefit us all.
Like many people who go into programming, I am a bit of an introvert. I can program for days without interacting with other developers and feel very comfortable.
But I am not a total hermit. I want to get with others occasionally to bounce ideas off or to show what I have built. A solo project can get lonely after awhile.
Honestly, building solo has taken a toll on me in ways I didn’t expect. I feel like I’ve lost parts of my personality, especially the part that used to come naturally when talking to people. I was always good at conversations. I still manage in virtual calls and meetings, but it doesn’t feel the same anymore. The essence is missing. Nobody warns you about how lonely it gets. But also… no one tells you how free it feels, to pivot, to mess up, to chase ideas without anyone’s permission. It is weirdly both isolating and empowering. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to peace and self-satisfaction. Embrace the solitude, or get lost in the noise. Still figuring out which one wins.
I resonate with this in a major way. A couple of times now we have received feedback around the product, branding etc when I've gone from not even considering any changes to the new direction being fully implemented within the product in 48H. This was unthinkable when you were part of a "machine" within a larger enterprise however nimble it may have been. The internal friction that comes up whenever you're thinking about a product change - because of the PTSD from the drawn out discussions in my prior roles - almost needs to be unlearned and coaxed out!
Feels like we’re not just building products, but also unlearning layers of corporate conditioning. And maybe, in that process, we’re slowly rebuilding ourselves too, quieter, leaner, but closer to the core.
Working on a side project that I hope to launch in the near future, I can relate. At first I tried sharing with friends/family
but noticed how disinterested anybody who isn't working on it themselves are.
I personally thrive on conversation and a back-and-forth to hone my ideas and thoughts so it's definitely been hard.
I ended up settling on creating system prompts for both OpenAI and Anthropic for co-founders with the explicit prompt that they critique and challenge my thoughts.
In ChatGPT web interface you can create a folder for that context and then all my conversations in that folder relate to my project.
It isn't perfect but it does help and it's a soundboard that's available 24/7, and lets me develop my thoughts, do my research, etc.
There's a risk of it being an giant echo chamber. But then again, most startups are until they hit the market and start validating against reality.
As a solo builder myself, I totally agree. You get lost in your head a lot of times since you're the only one who understands the problem set you're working on, the progress you're making, and the challenges that still lie ahead.
The work you do is also not something that's easy to talk about with friends and family who have regular jobs either. I think for a lot of people what you're might be just a fun thing and not a real job, and if you talk about how hard it can be to try to work on something yourself, they might not fully appreciate it since you could just walk away from it all and get a "real job".
Not having coworkers is tough when you just want to chill and hang out for a few minutes before getting back to work, although if you were working remote during the pandemic or are still working remote today, you probably got used to that.
Have you tried co-working spaces? I know you won't necessarily be able to vibe on the work you're doing, but having random conversations with people might make the solo work a bit more bearable.
Going to meetups or events with other entrepreneurs may also help. I've gone to meetups and talked to other people who are doing their own thing (or startups with others) and I can see they have the same experiences, which helps keep me sane.
It's a very common feeling and I'm no stranger to it as a solo game developer. But remember that the "grass is always greener on the other side". Chances are that, once you go back to the "nice job" at the end of the day, you'll miss the peace and ownership of your solo building days.
I always enjoyed chatting with my coworkers and learning from them. I do miss that. But I don't miss anything else from that environment, to be honest.
Yeah, if it serves OP as consolation I've been in full time employment 9 yrs. Sick of 'socialising' and I'm building my own thing with 0 people to take with me. I need full agency, I'm done with death by thousand feedback. The grass is indeed greener and I'll probably miss working with people... in 2-3 years. We'll see.
I've been remote and essentially on a solo projects even though I work on a team with 50+ offshore devs that it physically pains me when I have to get on a call and talk with coworkers.
I've worked independently, then had employee programmers, now back to independent. It's a mixed bag. It's all on my shoulders now, it's lonely, and progress is slower. On the other hand when I had a team, I had to organize the priority, check the work, motivate them. It was quite a distraction in many ways. I also felt I was creating too much make-work just to keep people interested.
But now I struggle with my own motivation having no one to share the burden. Co-working and colleagues doesn't really improve the loneliness much.
I don't have an answer though. I'll probably go back to a team some day.
I onboarded a junior (not an intern though) as an otherwise solo engineer, and there definitely is something different about both being able to explain to them in such as way that they start to understand, and also watching them grow. I find it fulfilling, something that I don't think can be replicated with AI (and also good for everyone in sharing experience). Maybe it helps that the junior is very interested in the job and growing.
That being said, there's also a lot of time in teaching and explaining that isn't directly pushing work forward, so there's that to consider.
Back in the days, one could hang out on IRC and make many friends there.
But now the tribe has been split into smaller, more focused walled gardens.
I wonder if there exist some online caffee in some corner of the internet where solopreneur can chill casually amongst peers? Local startup meetups are full of poseurs, I miss the decomplexed yet friendly IRC experience.
Yes, this road is very lonely. Always has been. Entrepreneurship is going against the grain, with no help or support. Until one day you make it and then everyone tells you how easy you have it. Is it no different than when European settlers came to America or all of the space program. Exploration is in our blood, few undertake such ventures, and it is always a lonely endeavour.
In my experience (US-based), small business owners are one of the most celebrated segments of the population. I assume it is a small business if there are no other employees with which to celebrate.
There is lots of help and support available from the SBA to special tax breaks.
The space program had a lot of scientists working on the same big project, and the European settlers had the backing of their government to take land from the native tribes
Even the first men on the moon were a team of what, three guys in the capsule and two in the lander itself?
I’m not an engineer by profession but am building a consulting practice solo.
The main concern I have is whether solo work is training me to deprioritize friends/friendships. Sometimes I think yes, sometimes no. Especially as a male with all the commentary these days about how men don’t know how to be friends and do things with each other.
But on the other hand, I’m never stressed by someone’s end of day or rush request or anything like that.
I am the least stressed for the longest period of time that I can remember. Easy to forget for the benefit of other things but I think it is so important.
So I do bounce things off my clients. They pay me. So we talk quite a bit. And I’ve found lots of other folks doing what I’m doing. We collaborate, share, and commiserate as much as we can.
The best counter to this is to have groups of people you can show your work off to.
Family? Cool, I guess. It can start there.
Slack? Discord? Yeah, those work I guess. There are some pretty cool niche groups who love to talk code, projects, whatever.
Games? That's where it's at. Social clubs revolve around those and you'd be surprised how many smart & techy people play games. You just gotta get past the barrier of "I don't want to talk about work/personal life/projects etc". You might even find like-minded people wanting to turn what you've got into a business. Or hire you.
Not really. I have been writing my own software for personal use for several years. Yes, it’s quiet but it does everything I want as fast as I could want it to happen.
The worst thing about this is complete loss of compatibility to the world of corporate software employment. Other software developers do not think like this. In the land of employment you work on what you are told, no more and no less. If the stuff you work on is slow you just get to bitch about it. If there are frustrations or missing features then you simply wait for a patch that may never come.
> In the land of employment you work on what you are told, no more and no less. If the stuff you work on is slow you just get to bitch about it. If there are frustrations or missing features then you simply wait for a patch that may never come.
I relate, but you need to become healthy. Get up early in the morning, run with your friends or join a group of runners. That’s the answer. Regulate your sleep, get your blood checked, and if you’re low on vitamin D3, supplement it. Follow Bryan Johnson’s blueprint as a reference.
Then go build. Be 50X.
I do relate with what you’re saying, BUT there’s a solution. It’s not a pill, it’s not a diet, it’s not giving up and recruiting people just because you’re lonely.
I can absolutely relate since I'm doing the same right now. I had a good meeting with another founder last week, and the thing I was most excited about wasn't the potential integration between our platforms but just that he was willing to invite me to a group call of other early founders to get support and ideas. This is emotionally more difficult than any previous building phase I've had.
I suppose I'm rather used to it so it doesn't bother me too much. I'd worked from home for several years before going solo and by then was only doing a few videocalls a week, so it wasn't much of a difference day to day.
However, I do miss having someone working on the same project to bounce ideas off of. I have to rubber duck the old fashioned way.
Same here. I love working on my own schedule, but definitely miss bouncing ideas and learning from others. Maybe we can make a discord and slowly grow it from there?
Yes - 100%. That's why I have a Slack where I invite friends and other people hacking away. Planning on setting up more remote social stuff to beat the 'loneliness' factor. Happy to send you an invite if you want. We're friendly.
The solution is to get a partner, either in the form of one or two other devs, or at least in the form of an audience who is engaged and willing to give you regular and detailed feedback
> No feedback, no one to bounce ideas off, no “nice job” at the end of the day.
>
> The freedom is great, but it gets weirdly quiet.
>
> Anyone else relate?
This was my first 8 yrs in professional development.
I had no way to gauge my skills or success.
Got lucky when another department needed help with a project and I worked with some great folks for the better part of a year. Learned my value relative to the market and was able to better advocate for myself and find a new job.
Not really. For me, coding was a solo activity for many years. I learned to program on my own from books in the early 90s, and I didn't even have internet to talk to anyone about it. I would build things for hours every day, all by myself. I loved it.
When I decided to go into software development professionally, learning to code with others was a struggle. I am used to doing everything myself without having to consider what others want or need.
I get a bit miffed if I go a full day working remotely without any meetings, I can't imagine signing up for this all day every day with no end in sight.
It felt lonely until I had a (love) partner. She maybe doesn't care about all the technical bullshit I load on her, but she listens and is happy to be supportive.
Get a Discord going with your users. Advertise it in your app. If you are building something valuable, they will join and encourage you. That's what I've done and it's a lot less lonely now with hundreds of people tuning in and discussing things (my work) daily.
If they don't show up, then you probably are not shipping early enough and valuably enough to keep this going. Or you need to learn more modern marketing strategies for unfunded solo builders. Or you are building something valuable that your users have no passion for, which will be hard for yourself to grow sustainable passion.
I work remotely for a fortune 250 company and am on a project with 50+ devs. They are all offshore and I generally work on solo assignments. I go days, sometimes weeks without talking to anyone else including my onshore director. We have a weekly 1:1 scheduled and they are cancelled every week. I generally only end up speaking to him less than 10 times over the year.
Its gotten to the point where If I have get a meeting on my calendar all I feel is irritation.
I lost all my real life friends 10+ years ago once I had kids and I have worked remotely for the same period of time. I can literally go weeks without talking to anyone besides my kids and wife. I don't leave the house unless its to go to the gym or to take the kids to sports. In the gym I'm just head phones on and head down. Just got back from a mini vacation with my wife to a beach resort and all everyone spoke to me about was my physique. I had nothing to respond to them with. I honestly feel like an alien sometimes.
Ironically, I solo-built an AI bookkeeper for solopreneurs all of last year on my own dime. Predictably, I ran out of money and had to go back to contracting.
It was incredibly hard for me and I started to lose my mental health. It was a struggle to get any positive or negative validation, to get anyone to pay any kind of attention whatsoever. It was a great luxury for me when an investor actually said "no," most blew smoke up my butt and strung me along. Even my paying users seemed to not really care one way or another.
After I ran out of money and all but abandoned the project, I had an incredible stroke of good luck when an established player in my niche out of nowhere decided to incubate a new version of my app built on their platform. For a minute, I was finally getting real traction as this company's founder started promoting me across their socials: people signing up, giving feedback, folks adding me on LinkedIn, messaging me to set up partnerships.
The deal eventually fell apart and everything went cold again, but for a second I saw how much easier this all is when you have social proof. It was frustrating. Nothing had changed in me or my product other than a famous person backing me. I was the exact same entrepreneur with the exact same offering, but somehow now I was worthy because someone else said so. Well, I guess that's how the world works.
I want to say "hang in there," but honestly for me the whole episode was the straw that broke the camel's back. After 12+ years of working for myself, I'm seriously reconsidering my life choices and whether I still want this. I'm currently focused on contracting and paying down my debt.
I think that I'm coming back, slowly, to the entrepreneurial path, shorn of many of the BS narratives the tech industry tells about startups. The loneliness is very real and I feel every inch of your pain. You are not alone.
If you ever want to share or reach out, feel free to shoot me an email: me@ersinakinci.com. I'm also trying to write more about my journey at www.ersinakinci.com, although I haven't written yet about the startup failure--too raw still, and frankly, I'm afraid of telling the whole truth.
When a free soloist climbs a mountain by themselves, they are entirely alone. Do you think they have time to think about loneliness while climbing? No.
That’s the mentality you need when building solo. If you’re thinking about how lonely you are, it just means you’re losing focus. Get your head in the game.
When you get to the top, you have all the time in the world to think about how lonely you are up there. And if you don’t get to the top, well, don’t worry about it…
This is quite insensitive and a poor analogy. Telling someone who's struggling to "Get your head in the game" is unhelpful in the extreme. It's like telling someone who's drowning to "Just swim better".
Free climbing is a high-risk pursuit. A free climber goes on occasional expeditions where they solo a route, but before then, they train with others, have spotters and partners during route practice, and whole communities to provide help, support and emergency contact should things go wrong. Alex Honnold doesn't just rock up to a mountain (if you'll forgive the pun) and solo it every day for months on end.
It's very difficult to just put everything aside and focus on a singular task for the amount of time it takes to complete a significant software project. Once the initial enthusiasm wanes, keeping going can be a real challenge when you're on your own. The OP's concerns are absolutely valid and deserve respect.
What you just said about free-climbing is perfectly applicable to building something solo. Except unlike climbing solo, building a product is easier because you could get support the whole way. Also you won’t die if you fail.
You should never expect enthusiasm to last. How many people are just as enthusiastic about going to the gym for years compared to when they first start out? These are all the things people need to realize before embarking on these solo journeys.
You may not like it, but if a person was drowning and they actually do start to “just swim better”, they will survive. Just do what you need to do.
Who would look at a drowning person and say "just swim better and you'll survive"?
A drowning person can't "just swim better". That's exactly why they're drowning in the first place.
What you're saying is true but not helpful. There's a whole process that goes into "just do it" that is weirdly unpopular to talk about. You have to become capable first, and that only happens in community where you can safely make a lot of mistakes.
This is the main reason I quit freelancing. Working 3-4 hours was great. Money was decent. There's groups for freelancers and solopreneurs and such. But they're not on your side, they're just peers.
Eventually I think life stagnates. Working for a unicorn had its downs, but there's just something about working with people smarter than me. One thing I just hate about social media is having to explain everything. HN seems to get me, but not quite. In a top tier tech company, there would probably be 6 or so people who have done the same thing you're doing. And you can just sit around for hours debating the best way to design a table to store currencies and be paid a good sum for it. We can talk about insane things like testing in production, getting rid of feature flags, getting rid of documentation. Or just dumb things like Wordle solving algorithms. Someone will not only get it, they'd indulge you on it. But you'd need to hire some of the smartest people in a region and force them all to join the same Slack.
I FIREd and this is what I miss. Not a techie but a whitecollar job with a bunch of smart people. Miss that.
Same. But I guess I’ve just accepted it and moved on. I’m willing to give that up for not having to give up 75% of my wake hours to a purely economic entity.
I think I’m mostly surprised that so many smart/capable/successful people keep grinding long after they need to. And I’m sad that those of us that don’t have a harder time finding eachother because we don’t have a common career to put us in a room together constantly.
Ah well. Wouldn’t trade any of the great adventures I’ve had for a job or a large sum of money. I’m happy with my trade.
I can relate, not sure what to do about it besides move to a hacker house in Thailand or such.
NPR's show 1A had a program on loneliness. There were a couple of interesting things: these days university cafeterias are quiet because everybody eats alone while looking at their phone. A Gen-Zer complained they 2 jobs and no time to socialize. On top of that, our third places are being ruined with hostile architecture (parks), or uncomfortable seating (Starbucks) because they want you to just do a mobile order and get out. Seems like the Internet should at least be a good third space, its called cyberspace after all, but at least idk how to get invited to the right discords or tiny social spaces where there's community.
Starbucks actually does not want you to just do a mobile order, it's often cited as a reason for their lowered sales. This is a rather long podcast interview with Howard Schultz so search for the line "Ben: Of course. All right. While we’re in technology land, I think today 33% of Starbucks orders are done with mobile order and pay." and you'll see where that conversation about mobile ordering ruining third places exists.
https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/starbucks-with-howard-schul...
They literally removed all tables and chairs inside my local starbucks. There's a standing bench only. It's a huge Starbucks, lots of empty floor space right now. Nowhere to sit. They seem to want you to order and gtfo.
If they want people to come in and sit down why have they removed all tables and chairs?
The following isn't my local Starbucks at all but the link has pictures of what many Starbucks look like inside right now. I don't live in a high crime or high homelessness area at all (not near any big city) and they removed all seating from multiple local Starbucks in the past few months (they are clearly leaning into doing this more not away from it).
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-castro-starbucks-seat...
> Kyle Trainer, a barista at the location, said he believed Starbucks eliminated seating due to homeless individuals and people with mental illnesses around the neighborhood. He added that Starbucks does not adequately train team members to manage stressful situations and that the chain would rather “remove the seating, close the bathroom and not deal with it.”
Being in SF versus other cities and suburbs very likely has something to do with it, I'm not sure where you live but they're apparently bring back more furniture as cited in a link in my other comments. But who knows, maybe they're prioritizing bringing back furniture based on many factors.
Your link is broken. I do know that Mr. Schultz has given lip-service to the fact that Starbucks is no longer a third place, but in the other column I present the fact that there are no longer any comfortable chairs at my nearest Starbucks and the next one by distance is Drive-Thru only.
For what it's worth, they are working on a bunch of store redesigns to incentivize people to stay in stores. It probably hasn't hit your area yet.
All that said, I do think it is a sorry state when Starbucks is the only/best third place option.
Updated my comment with the original source. What kinds of chairs are those? Maybe it's me but I found my Starbucks pretty bustling, people gathering, the chairs fairly comfortable for even long periods of time working on a laptop for example. Hell, we even have several single seater couches and that's been fairly standard since I can remember.
Welp, I should have probably told you I'm in a suburb. I'm guessing you are in a cool city. /jealous
When I was in a suburb we still had that sort of seating, and I recently went back and I see those couches still. Maybe they don't put them in new stores, I'm not sure, but I don't think they remove them if they're already there. These are the kinds I'm talking about and seeing [0].
Another source on couches returning [1], maybe in the suburbs too.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/malelivingspace/comments/42gl0s/whe...
[1] https://fortune.com/2025/07/06/starbucks-coffeehouse-of-the-...
That sounds fascinating. Unfortunately, your link is broken.
I updated my comment with the original source. The whole interview is worth listening to, Acquired is a fantastic lomg form business podcast.
Restaurants are about increasing transaction volume above all else, especially at smaller dollar amounts. Second order might include things like average cost of servicing each transaction.
It's kind of chicken and egg - you get invited to more small discords if you already know and chat to people in other ones.
And then you still have to like Discord as a medium in the first place…
same as with real life parties...
Are parks hostile?
The architect Christopher Alexander has this pattern in "A Pattern Language" called "Home Workshop". (Summary: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/christopher-alexanders-arch...) Roughly, the idea was that if you can walk around your neighborhood and see different people working at their professions, the wholeness of the neighborhood increases. It comes more alive. Children imbibe a more realistic sense of what different professions involve. Professionals are connected to the world as they create. I try to keep this in mind. As our world has grown more digital, this consideration was one of the reasons I created this devlog last year: https://akkartik.name/freewheeling-apps
I feel this. I think loneliness has been the principle feeling in my life forever, whether I'm with people very different to myself or like-minded. Lack of connection == lack of purpose, and that makes every action more difficult.
Piers Steel researches motivation and has a book called "The Procrastination Equation". In the book, motivation is modelled as Motivation = (Expectedness * Value) / (Impulse * Delay). In his academic papers, it's rendered as:
Utilityᵢ = (Eᵢ Vᵢ) / (Γᵢ D)
That is, the perceived utility of any action increases with the expectancy that one will be able to finish it, and the perceived value of the end result, and is reduced by a person's inclination to be impulsive or distracted and the end goal's distance from the present.
How can any action have utility if someone has no place in the world? As a social species, our purpose is largely defined socially. When you're going solo, it's hard to get a sense of value of a given action.
The main thing I'm missing at the moment is learning by osmosis from people with more experience. Learning stuff that I didn't know I didn't know. Mentorship.
Something I've been doing for general feedback is keeping my friends updated on what I'm up to and asking for their perspectives. There's a bit of a balance though cause you don't want them to associate you too strongly with your work and bring it up whenever you see them.
If you mean technical feedback then yeah not being surrounded by other engineers you can bounce ideas off kind of sucks...
Not sure how sporty you are but I have a pretty fixed weekly routine where I do sports with my friends some nights after "work" and I've found that great for forgetting about my project and pulling me away from the computer at a reasonable hour. For loneliness during the day I've found working somewhere busy helps, like a library. Maybe a nice way of framing it is that you can't get distracted by coworkers if you don't have any :)
I can relate on the one hand but I also have a potential partial solution for you.
Early on, one of the choices I made as a solo founder was to put a note under my products asking existing customers to contact me for a loyalty discount.
This could’ve been automated of course, but now I routinely get emails from customers and they constantly say kind words about the software, make suggestions and provide encouragement.
Plus you can see their email signatures and links to understand who your customers are. You can ask them questions, even working collaboratively. You start having regulars who reach out.
It helps a lot because it creates a better sense that what you’re building is actually a part of people’s lives.
This is a great idea that could extend to alternating one week on product building vs one week in market interacting.
The solitude can be real.
I was the only developer in a 4 person startup. we'd go to board rooms and talk about how great the software we were building was, and all faces would turn to me and be like 'oh yeah, and how is that software we're all here to sell coming along now?' Not only was it 'lonely' but all the actual pressure to produce the product was on me. I would never want to go back to that state ever again. Now I still work remotely but there is a decidedly social component to this job because I'm not the only developer. I'm one of 34.
Not going to lie, this is one of the few reasons I use LLMs at all. Even if I feel like I have a decent idea if I don't have anyone around to listen I'll just lob thoughts at an AI just to ask for alternatives, dissenting opinions, critiques, etc. Typically much of the output are things I already considered, but even that can be validating itself as a sort of reminder that I did think things through. And on some occasions it does raise things I wouldn't have considered which can be great to stop and chew on before proceeding.
How do you reconcile the fact that LLMs can be pretty fair-weather? Meaning, while they can serve as a sounding board and often raise perspectives you might not have thought of, they don't have much conviction and will change their tune if you push them in the other direction enough.
My approach is to compliment the LLM on something I've not thought of and ask it to sell me on the approach, expound on its position, and ask probing questions. If I get a feeling something's off I just go do independent research like normal.
In my friends group we regularly go coworking together. Sometimes we close our laptops and go get dinner or drinks after work. We are vaguely aware of what everyone is working on because we rant about it and ask each other for help. I use them for informal UX testing.
I also have a small audience on social media that lets me work in public. They are very supportive.
I've actually thought about doing this - everyone works remotely from the day - from one of the group's houses. It sounds like something that would benefit us all.
Like many people who go into programming, I am a bit of an introvert. I can program for days without interacting with other developers and feel very comfortable.
But I am not a total hermit. I want to get with others occasionally to bounce ideas off or to show what I have built. A solo project can get lonely after awhile.
Honestly, building solo has taken a toll on me in ways I didn’t expect. I feel like I’ve lost parts of my personality, especially the part that used to come naturally when talking to people. I was always good at conversations. I still manage in virtual calls and meetings, but it doesn’t feel the same anymore. The essence is missing. Nobody warns you about how lonely it gets. But also… no one tells you how free it feels, to pivot, to mess up, to chase ideas without anyone’s permission. It is weirdly both isolating and empowering. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to peace and self-satisfaction. Embrace the solitude, or get lost in the noise. Still figuring out which one wins.
I resonate with this in a major way. A couple of times now we have received feedback around the product, branding etc when I've gone from not even considering any changes to the new direction being fully implemented within the product in 48H. This was unthinkable when you were part of a "machine" within a larger enterprise however nimble it may have been. The internal friction that comes up whenever you're thinking about a product change - because of the PTSD from the drawn out discussions in my prior roles - almost needs to be unlearned and coaxed out!
Feels like we’re not just building products, but also unlearning layers of corporate conditioning. And maybe, in that process, we’re slowly rebuilding ourselves too, quieter, leaner, but closer to the core.
Working on a side project that I hope to launch in the near future, I can relate. At first I tried sharing with friends/family but noticed how disinterested anybody who isn't working on it themselves are.
I personally thrive on conversation and a back-and-forth to hone my ideas and thoughts so it's definitely been hard.
I ended up settling on creating system prompts for both OpenAI and Anthropic for co-founders with the explicit prompt that they critique and challenge my thoughts.
In ChatGPT web interface you can create a folder for that context and then all my conversations in that folder relate to my project.
It isn't perfect but it does help and it's a soundboard that's available 24/7, and lets me develop my thoughts, do my research, etc.
There's a risk of it being an giant echo chamber. But then again, most startups are until they hit the market and start validating against reality.
As a solo builder myself, I totally agree. You get lost in your head a lot of times since you're the only one who understands the problem set you're working on, the progress you're making, and the challenges that still lie ahead.
The work you do is also not something that's easy to talk about with friends and family who have regular jobs either. I think for a lot of people what you're might be just a fun thing and not a real job, and if you talk about how hard it can be to try to work on something yourself, they might not fully appreciate it since you could just walk away from it all and get a "real job".
Not having coworkers is tough when you just want to chill and hang out for a few minutes before getting back to work, although if you were working remote during the pandemic or are still working remote today, you probably got used to that.
Have you tried co-working spaces? I know you won't necessarily be able to vibe on the work you're doing, but having random conversations with people might make the solo work a bit more bearable.
Going to meetups or events with other entrepreneurs may also help. I've gone to meetups and talked to other people who are doing their own thing (or startups with others) and I can see they have the same experiences, which helps keep me sane.
It's a very common feeling and I'm no stranger to it as a solo game developer. But remember that the "grass is always greener on the other side". Chances are that, once you go back to the "nice job" at the end of the day, you'll miss the peace and ownership of your solo building days.
I always enjoyed chatting with my coworkers and learning from them. I do miss that. But I don't miss anything else from that environment, to be honest.
Yeah, if it serves OP as consolation I've been in full time employment 9 yrs. Sick of 'socialising' and I'm building my own thing with 0 people to take with me. I need full agency, I'm done with death by thousand feedback. The grass is indeed greener and I'll probably miss working with people... in 2-3 years. We'll see.
I've been remote and essentially on a solo projects even though I work on a team with 50+ offshore devs that it physically pains me when I have to get on a call and talk with coworkers.
I've worked independently, then had employee programmers, now back to independent. It's a mixed bag. It's all on my shoulders now, it's lonely, and progress is slower. On the other hand when I had a team, I had to organize the priority, check the work, motivate them. It was quite a distraction in many ways. I also felt I was creating too much make-work just to keep people interested.
But now I struggle with my own motivation having no one to share the burden. Co-working and colleagues doesn't really improve the loneliness much.
I don't have an answer though. I'll probably go back to a team some day.
Hire an intern at minimum wage, theres a ton of ones from good schools that want to work at startups. hire two.
Oh god, then you’ll be like one of those founders calling them family because you have no friends
Just talk to an AI and go volunteer at a farmers market
I onboarded a junior (not an intern though) as an otherwise solo engineer, and there definitely is something different about both being able to explain to them in such as way that they start to understand, and also watching them grow. I find it fulfilling, something that I don't think can be replicated with AI (and also good for everyone in sharing experience). Maybe it helps that the junior is very interested in the job and growing.
That being said, there's also a lot of time in teaching and explaining that isn't directly pushing work forward, so there's that to consider.
Back in the days, one could hang out on IRC and make many friends there. But now the tribe has been split into smaller, more focused walled gardens. I wonder if there exist some online caffee in some corner of the internet where solopreneur can chill casually amongst peers? Local startup meetups are full of poseurs, I miss the decomplexed yet friendly IRC experience.
You may like the MicroConf community
https://microconf.com/connect
$50/month...
That's fair,
It also filters out talkers vs doers who are building and earning.
Depends on the community you are after. Reddit likely has something.. or start something :)
Yes, this road is very lonely. Always has been. Entrepreneurship is going against the grain, with no help or support. Until one day you make it and then everyone tells you how easy you have it. Is it no different than when European settlers came to America or all of the space program. Exploration is in our blood, few undertake such ventures, and it is always a lonely endeavour.
In my experience (US-based), small business owners are one of the most celebrated segments of the population. I assume it is a small business if there are no other employees with which to celebrate.
There is lots of help and support available from the SBA to special tax breaks.
The space program had a lot of scientists working on the same big project, and the European settlers had the backing of their government to take land from the native tribes
Even the first men on the moon were a team of what, three guys in the capsule and two in the lander itself?
I’m not an engineer by profession but am building a consulting practice solo.
The main concern I have is whether solo work is training me to deprioritize friends/friendships. Sometimes I think yes, sometimes no. Especially as a male with all the commentary these days about how men don’t know how to be friends and do things with each other.
But on the other hand, I’m never stressed by someone’s end of day or rush request or anything like that.
I am the least stressed for the longest period of time that I can remember. Easy to forget for the benefit of other things but I think it is so important.
So I do bounce things off my clients. They pay me. So we talk quite a bit. And I’ve found lots of other folks doing what I’m doing. We collaborate, share, and commiserate as much as we can.
The best counter to this is to have groups of people you can show your work off to.
Family? Cool, I guess. It can start there.
Slack? Discord? Yeah, those work I guess. There are some pretty cool niche groups who love to talk code, projects, whatever.
Games? That's where it's at. Social clubs revolve around those and you'd be surprised how many smart & techy people play games. You just gotta get past the barrier of "I don't want to talk about work/personal life/projects etc". You might even find like-minded people wanting to turn what you've got into a business. Or hire you.
Not really. I have been writing my own software for personal use for several years. Yes, it’s quiet but it does everything I want as fast as I could want it to happen.
The worst thing about this is complete loss of compatibility to the world of corporate software employment. Other software developers do not think like this. In the land of employment you work on what you are told, no more and no less. If the stuff you work on is slow you just get to bitch about it. If there are frustrations or missing features then you simply wait for a patch that may never come.
> In the land of employment you work on what you are told, no more and no less. If the stuff you work on is slow you just get to bitch about it. If there are frustrations or missing features then you simply wait for a patch that may never come.
This isn't my experience.
How do you pay your bills?
I relate, but you need to become healthy. Get up early in the morning, run with your friends or join a group of runners. That’s the answer. Regulate your sleep, get your blood checked, and if you’re low on vitamin D3, supplement it. Follow Bryan Johnson’s blueprint as a reference.
Then go build. Be 50X.
I do relate with what you’re saying, BUT there’s a solution. It’s not a pill, it’s not a diet, it’s not giving up and recruiting people just because you’re lonely.
50X is not enough anymore. They should strive for 100X.
I can absolutely relate since I'm doing the same right now. I had a good meeting with another founder last week, and the thing I was most excited about wasn't the potential integration between our platforms but just that he was willing to invite me to a group call of other early founders to get support and ideas. This is emotionally more difficult than any previous building phase I've had.
I suppose I'm rather used to it so it doesn't bother me too much. I'd worked from home for several years before going solo and by then was only doing a few videocalls a week, so it wasn't much of a difference day to day.
However, I do miss having someone working on the same project to bounce ideas off of. I have to rubber duck the old fashioned way.
When I was a solo founder I tried to solve it with solocity.net, but didn't get enough people to sign up
Same here. I love working on my own schedule, but definitely miss bouncing ideas and learning from others. Maybe we can make a discord and slowly grow it from there?
I would love that! Technically I am not solo, but for all intents and purposes I kinda am
Yes - 100%. That's why I have a Slack where I invite friends and other people hacking away. Planning on setting up more remote social stuff to beat the 'loneliness' factor. Happy to send you an invite if you want. We're friendly.
Could I jump on this train, kind stranger?
The solution is to get a partner, either in the form of one or two other devs, or at least in the form of an audience who is engaged and willing to give you regular and detailed feedback
Absolutely. This is my biggest obstacle on doing personal projects.
> No feedback, no one to bounce ideas off, no “nice job” at the end of the day. > > The freedom is great, but it gets weirdly quiet. > > Anyone else relate?
This was my first 8 yrs in professional development.
I had no way to gauge my skills or success.
Got lucky when another department needed help with a project and I worked with some great folks for the better part of a year. Learned my value relative to the market and was able to better advocate for myself and find a new job.
Not really. For me, coding was a solo activity for many years. I learned to program on my own from books in the early 90s, and I didn't even have internet to talk to anyone about it. I would build things for hours every day, all by myself. I loved it.
When I decided to go into software development professionally, learning to code with others was a struggle. I am used to doing everything myself without having to consider what others want or need.
I get a bit miffed if I go a full day working remotely without any meetings, I can't imagine signing up for this all day every day with no end in sight.
I can sometimes relate, but you have to remember that even if you're building alone, you're still allowed to go talk to people!
It felt lonely until I had a (love) partner. She maybe doesn't care about all the technical bullshit I load on her, but she listens and is happy to be supportive.
Curious why you are building?
Get a Discord going with your users. Advertise it in your app. If you are building something valuable, they will join and encourage you. That's what I've done and it's a lot less lonely now with hundreds of people tuning in and discussing things (my work) daily.
If they don't show up, then you probably are not shipping early enough and valuably enough to keep this going. Or you need to learn more modern marketing strategies for unfunded solo builders. Or you are building something valuable that your users have no passion for, which will be hard for yourself to grow sustainable passion.
I work remotely for a fortune 250 company and am on a project with 50+ devs. They are all offshore and I generally work on solo assignments. I go days, sometimes weeks without talking to anyone else including my onshore director. We have a weekly 1:1 scheduled and they are cancelled every week. I generally only end up speaking to him less than 10 times over the year.
Its gotten to the point where If I have get a meeting on my calendar all I feel is irritation.
I lost all my real life friends 10+ years ago once I had kids and I have worked remotely for the same period of time. I can literally go weeks without talking to anyone besides my kids and wife. I don't leave the house unless its to go to the gym or to take the kids to sports. In the gym I'm just head phones on and head down. Just got back from a mini vacation with my wife to a beach resort and all everyone spoke to me about was my physique. I had nothing to respond to them with. I honestly feel like an alien sometimes.
Very strange days.
I relate very, very hard.
Ironically, I solo-built an AI bookkeeper for solopreneurs all of last year on my own dime. Predictably, I ran out of money and had to go back to contracting.
It was incredibly hard for me and I started to lose my mental health. It was a struggle to get any positive or negative validation, to get anyone to pay any kind of attention whatsoever. It was a great luxury for me when an investor actually said "no," most blew smoke up my butt and strung me along. Even my paying users seemed to not really care one way or another.
After I ran out of money and all but abandoned the project, I had an incredible stroke of good luck when an established player in my niche out of nowhere decided to incubate a new version of my app built on their platform. For a minute, I was finally getting real traction as this company's founder started promoting me across their socials: people signing up, giving feedback, folks adding me on LinkedIn, messaging me to set up partnerships.
The deal eventually fell apart and everything went cold again, but for a second I saw how much easier this all is when you have social proof. It was frustrating. Nothing had changed in me or my product other than a famous person backing me. I was the exact same entrepreneur with the exact same offering, but somehow now I was worthy because someone else said so. Well, I guess that's how the world works.
I want to say "hang in there," but honestly for me the whole episode was the straw that broke the camel's back. After 12+ years of working for myself, I'm seriously reconsidering my life choices and whether I still want this. I'm currently focused on contracting and paying down my debt.
I think that I'm coming back, slowly, to the entrepreneurial path, shorn of many of the BS narratives the tech industry tells about startups. The loneliness is very real and I feel every inch of your pain. You are not alone.
If you ever want to share or reach out, feel free to shoot me an email: me@ersinakinci.com. I'm also trying to write more about my journey at www.ersinakinci.com, although I haven't written yet about the startup failure--too raw still, and frankly, I'm afraid of telling the whole truth.
Yes. If you are doing SaaS, feel free to shot an email. I do 1-2 random meetings with other devs per week and they keep a bit of my sanity.
nice job, man!
You think it’s lonely?
When a free soloist climbs a mountain by themselves, they are entirely alone. Do you think they have time to think about loneliness while climbing? No.
That’s the mentality you need when building solo. If you’re thinking about how lonely you are, it just means you’re losing focus. Get your head in the game.
When you get to the top, you have all the time in the world to think about how lonely you are up there. And if you don’t get to the top, well, don’t worry about it…
This is quite insensitive and a poor analogy. Telling someone who's struggling to "Get your head in the game" is unhelpful in the extreme. It's like telling someone who's drowning to "Just swim better".
Free climbing is a high-risk pursuit. A free climber goes on occasional expeditions where they solo a route, but before then, they train with others, have spotters and partners during route practice, and whole communities to provide help, support and emergency contact should things go wrong. Alex Honnold doesn't just rock up to a mountain (if you'll forgive the pun) and solo it every day for months on end.
It's very difficult to just put everything aside and focus on a singular task for the amount of time it takes to complete a significant software project. Once the initial enthusiasm wanes, keeping going can be a real challenge when you're on your own. The OP's concerns are absolutely valid and deserve respect.
What you just said about free-climbing is perfectly applicable to building something solo. Except unlike climbing solo, building a product is easier because you could get support the whole way. Also you won’t die if you fail.
You should never expect enthusiasm to last. How many people are just as enthusiastic about going to the gym for years compared to when they first start out? These are all the things people need to realize before embarking on these solo journeys.
You may not like it, but if a person was drowning and they actually do start to “just swim better”, they will survive. Just do what you need to do.
Who would look at a drowning person and say "just swim better and you'll survive"?
A drowning person can't "just swim better". That's exactly why they're drowning in the first place.
What you're saying is true but not helpful. There's a whole process that goes into "just do it" that is weirdly unpopular to talk about. You have to become capable first, and that only happens in community where you can safely make a lot of mistakes.
> You have to become capable first, and that only happens in community where you can safely make a lot of mistakes.
I don't think this is true. You can become capable while building for a customer base. I don't think I've ever built "in community".
I’d love to know what you think we should say to a drowning person.