Ask HN: I underestimated how lonely building solo can be

Can definitely relate.

Last "job" was a startup with two other people and it was so great having others to bounce ideas off of and share the ups and downs. Building something together is a fundamental human joy IMO. We sold that and I've been working solo for the last 4 years.

It's lonely, and these have helped me.

- Making a point to physically get out of the house and ideally meet up with someone for a coffee or lunch or something.

- Being part of an active group chat.

- Podcasts

- Working out of a library or bustling cafe, just physically being around other people.

- Working out and maintaining a good wake/sleep cycle.

I also have some great hobbies (flying, scuba, rock climbing) with great communities that keep me socialized.

For anyone about to quit their job and try the solo dev thing, I always say mental well being has to be a "remembered priority". You're never going to have work/life balance like you did at an office job and the first few years are incredibly tough, so you need to plan for that. Marathon, not a race etc etc.

Where do you live? I live in North Carolina and there are tons of tech events. Basically everyone who goes to those almost definitely feels the exact same way as you, I'd recommend putting a few on the calendar!

Also check out https://x.com/solofounding

i feel ya. I started working on AI agents and because the whole thing was kinda new to me (had lots of experience on generative image side of things with finetuning etc..) I felt that there was a mountain of stuff to learn and no one to bounce ideas off. But then as i gained a lot of insight and knowledge on the topic I started to find that the velocity of progress was speeding up and felt that collaborating with anyone else would just slow things down. So on one side I would love someone to talk to regularly about this stuff especially if that's their things as well, but on another side I know that would slow down my velocity. But more so I am now approaching a situation where it feels like I am becoming an expert on some of this stuff and running in to lots of misinformation on the subject matter online so it feels like talking to anyone about this will turn to a teaching lesson which i don't want to waste time on either. Also I am doing this for knowledge and experience not money, and that alone is also making it difficult to discuss stuff with people as there are just way too many people interested in side hustle or money related matters versus the tech itself.

Opposite experience in my case

It’s super hard to find someone who can put the same time, energy and effort in as me on any project where it’s not an employer-employee relationship and I’m paying them

Since gpt 2 came out I’ve been way happier doing hobby or side projects with it than I have ever been working with other people, and it’s not even close

My setup is basically myself, my environment and then a chorus of cgpt, claude and Gemini acting as a large GAN.

I’ll give an exceptionally specific prompt with a proposed architecture then it’s just iterating, testing, debug etc…