I’ve been indie for about four years now. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, but it does come with its own kind of hell. The lack of security and the fear that everything could disappear overnight is always there. Some days feel euphoric, and some days everything feels dark.
At one point I even built a live sales dashboard[1] to keep my dopamine in check, but a year later I realized it was a mistake. It started shaping my motivation instead of supporting it.
I guess the main lesson is that the ups and downs are normal, and you get better at riding them over the years.
> the fear that everything could disappear overnight is
I feel the opposite. I was more fearful of losing my regular job because that could be taken away from me overnight at the whim of a bad manager. However it would take a lot longer for everything I've built up to crumble away.
> Every job I had was way more tiring than whatever situations I bring myself into.
It depends on your past job experience, if you had a cruisy job it's a wake up call, but if you've been working 16 hours a day and forced to be the jack of all trades because you have no support at the company, it's the same however you don't waste time in meetings, get more freedom and your efforts directly reward yourself.
> The loneliness. The pressure. The constant decision-making. The endless context switching. All the invisible work that isn’t coding. These are the things you learn once you’re already in it.
> It’s more chaotic and demanding than it looks, but also more rewarding in ways you don’t expect.
The first few lines immediately captured my attention because that's exactly how I've been feeling since going solo.
I left my big tech job about 5 months ago and started building my app - it's been a roller-coaster and I think this write-up summarizes how I've been feeling really well. I especially relate with the "constant decision making" - this can get exhausting; I definitely get decision fatigue frequently lol
Yes, I've been indie for a decade, working remotely with small clients before that, and seclusion has always been a plus. If I need to socialize, there're plenty of spaces for it outside of work.
In fact, I've been actively volunteering for the past four years, and no way I could do that without my flexible schedule that lets me just pause my work for a week and dedicate all my time to my community instead.
I agree on all but launching an app with a side job is less hard than the author expects: not having whatever you are working on to be a successful money maker does add lots of benefits. These include: not having to sell out (adding cheap ads is included in my opinion) just to make some money, take on projects you seriously believe should exist in the world and not because they are lucrative.
I had some success with side projects a while back, but I haven’t been able to spend much time on them lately. The anxiety is still there, especially with the current layoffs and the state of the economy. My plan is to go indie again once I reach lean FIRE, so money isn’t something I have to worry about and I can focus on building things I enjoy.
Monetization is always the tricky part, since most of the ideas I’m drawn to aren’t things a large audience would pay for. But working on projects I’m personally interested in is what keeps me motivated long enough to actually finish them. It’s easier now too, because AI lets me go from an idea to something usable in just a few hours.
I've just reached lean FIRE, will try to go indie soon. Like you the ideas I have are pretty niche and not things that neatly fit into a B2B SaaS. But I'm hoping I can build at least some income to supplement my investments, doesn't have to be much.
I'm nearly 2 year in and just turned 50. This resonates with me. I'm a parent building an EdTech app for my child. He just plain refuses to read. All he wants to do is play Roblox or watch YouTube videos about playing games (or cats).
The hardest part isn't the code. For me it's when I see VC-backed competitors with full teams. When I look back and remember working in a team of 20 devs with PMs and other support staff, it's hard to plough on alone. I'm glad of AI or this project would have been impossible. When my boy reads a story the app generated and asks if he can read another one, it makes it all feel worth it.
The loneliness is real. No one to bounce ideas off, no one to celebrate small wins with. Thinking about launching on HN soon just to find other builders in the EdTech space.
Still figuring it out. But my child is reading again, so that's a win for me.
I've been on that path since 2019. It's super challenging but so rewarding. Building your own universe, working your own way with total freedom and constraints.
I'm proud of all I've built and shared so far. But I still can't leave my day job. So at this point it's still 40/60.
At work, management asked if I'm willing to come back full-time and take over the team's leadership. No way. It's a costly game to play (huge opportunity cost), but the freedom is so valuable.
I’m here doing it too. It has been 2 years, I can’t believe it. I am thankful for the immense amount of learning I never would’ve done working in a more secure gig (in my market anyway.)
This feels familiar.. I've been on the solo indie track ever since 2020 when society decided to turn hostile. Now 5 years later I'm definitely in some deep uncharted territory. The loneliness was very bothersome, but over time it becomes quite liberating, like a hermit it frees you to discover the deeper things in life.
The work can be insane and makes you question why anyone would be mad enough to forgo the easy path for this. The freedom is just way too good though. Often I'm not exactly sure what weekday it is. When I want to go on a vacation I usually decide that 1-3 days ahead and just go somewhere. Silksong was great too. There's absolutely nothing better. Thinking about a 9-5 office job now fills me with pure dread, I think it would break my soul.
Good luck, you should try to scale up the business and get 2-3 regular contractors (artists, designers, marketing folks) so you have somewhat of a team going. It helps when you have people on a project to throw the ball back and forth a bit.
10 years here. Savings, sponsorships, funding, limited sales. Many many struggles. Not to mention COVID, kids, etc. Attempted to get jobs in the process, didn't work out. It's a hard route to take. A lot of flexibility but very lonely and isolating. You have to be the right kind of person and have more in your life than just your work. The motivation also has to be more than just money, otherwise you might as well quit and do something else. I would love to be happy in a job. Or even moderately accept the tradeoffs but those things also have to have the right setup e.g I don't think fully remote is good for anyone's mental health. Some levels of isolation are good for thinking and productivity, but when there's is idleness, when you have to rely on yourself to fill the time, eventually the hobbies and the time filling habits die off. Nothing replaces human connection. And on one level family and friends are good for that. But on another level working towards something with people. That really gives us a lot of meaning in our lives.
~7 years here. I couldn't have said it better. You summed it up perfectly. Matches my experience entirely.
I haven't yet found a working environment where things don't get marred by politics and plainly rude behaviour, especially by managers. I am sort of astounded that friendlier work environments don't seem to exist.
I've been in the business about 20 years and have seen better and worse examples. The best places I worked for got close to keeping me, but even those situations were temporary. Eventually, acquisitions happen, the direction of the business changes, the good people leave and then it's time to find yet another job.
Between that and the solo work, I have stuck with the solo work for much longer, so despite its challenges, it still seems preferable to me. But boy do you have to take care of your mental health.
Yes, I have found almost any developer job where you code much of the time to be incredibly lonely. Especially when teams are distributed, which seems to be the norm these days.
I went indie some 20 years ago because I needed money and I wanted full control over my life. Did some things right but many things wrong. Unfortunately, there is a price to pay to build your life in an unconventional way. Everything turned out well but it might have easily concluded with a disaster. Luck (or lack of it) plays a significant part however much you try.
What I would recommend to the "new indies":
- Build this on a side with a steady full-time job. If you can't get to a few thousand dollars per month by investing 2-3 hours per week day plus 10-20 hours on a weekend, going full time won't make a difference.
- If you have a family, be careful. You are making high risk decisions but people who depend on you didn't ask you to make a leap into unknown territory. Attempt to pull of indie business is stressful for everyone, may lead to years of strained relationship, and to a divorce.
- Do not share too much business information with your spouse. What is acceptable risk to you may cause dread to your significant other. They don't deserve all the emotional ups and downs that come with running a solo business. Absolutely do share important things because you are in this together - just don't frighten people whenever you are in a bad situation.
- Be mentally stable. If money is tight, if things are unknown, remember this was your choice.
- Don't be too proud - always be prepared to freelance or find a "real job" if needed. Remember that big success can take (many) years or it may never come. Do your best but do not self-destruct.
- Read "The E-Myth Revisited" to learn that your job changes. I was a spectacularly good developer when I started this. Today? Perhaps just a very good one because development turned out to be 10% of the job. You will wear many hats and some of those hats you will absolutely hate. You thought all you'll do is make state of the art software? Yeah, and you will also do sales, website, marketing, customer support, accounting, taxes. You will be exposed to all the shit you were blissfully unaware exists in business while at a steady job because it was someone else's job to handle all that. You will understand your past bosses much better.
All that said, I love the business I built. A beautiful lifestyle business for a quite a few years. It's a stable and growing business now, with a team of 20-ish people in 6 countries. We make great things, and have a great work-life balance.
You can do it, just don't sacrifice everything else. Nothing is certain but do your best. Always be kind to people. Remember to take care of the family first. Be there for them, spend time with them. Kids never grow up twice - what you missed, you missed for good.
Just regret waiting until I was 35 to attempt it and now I'm already going on 40. Wasted good years on easy mode.
edit:
But this part is wild to me: "I use AI for some things. It helped me fix a few bugs a couple of times"
I can't imagine being solo indie and not leaning hard into Codex, CC, or Composer at this point. To use it only sometimes for the rare bug or copy editing sounds tragic. It's been an incredible boon for me at least - extending, refactoring, prototyping etc. within a complex codebase I wrote myself and in new ones that I guide it on.
> I can't imagine being solo indie and not leaning hard into Codex, CC, or Composer at this point.
Some of us don't want to because we like our artisanal programming, and being indie is great because we don't have to capitulate to management forcing us to use AI all the time.
What's that saying? "If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life."
I use LLMs every day, but not to write my software. I use them like really good personal assistants. They are now a standard (and invaluable) part of my daily workflow.
I'm not exactly "indie" (retired at 55, and working for free), but I can relate to a lot of what's being discussed, here.
I wouldn't say I wasted the good years on easy mode, but I did have a misguided plan that I needed to become a team lead and then I could start on my side projects.
I thought I'd have more time because I saw just how little my team leads actually did at work, and no, they weren't doing it behind the scenes, they wouldn't even show up to meetings with the business.
Of course I cared too much, burnt out my best years, quit and now have jack to show for it on the wrong side of 40 when I could have built up my own indie empire.
I’ve been indie for about four years now. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, but it does come with its own kind of hell. The lack of security and the fear that everything could disappear overnight is always there. Some days feel euphoric, and some days everything feels dark.
At one point I even built a live sales dashboard[1] to keep my dopamine in check, but a year later I realized it was a mistake. It started shaping my motivation instead of supporting it.
I guess the main lesson is that the ups and downs are normal, and you get better at riding them over the years.
[1]: https://x.com/kushsolitary/status/1777306909344715158
> the fear that everything could disappear overnight is
I feel the opposite. I was more fearful of losing my regular job because that could be taken away from me overnight at the whim of a bad manager. However it would take a lot longer for everything I've built up to crumble away.
> I guess the main lesson is that the ups and downs are normal, and you get better at riding them over the years.
Any advice for someone who's just planning to start their own indie journey?
It would be easier to do it with a runway or do it along with a full-time job so you don't have to worry about money at the start
I've been looking for a good app for managing Mac screentime with reminders, etc.
Just bought a license!
that's awesome, thank you!
mybitboy looks very cool, nice job!
thank you, it's my prized possession
8 years or so in. I would lie if I say it's hard. Every job I had was way more tiring than whatever situations I bring myself into.
I love the freedom and doing nothing when I don't feel like it is the most inspiring and creativity boosting thing I've ever tried.
Even in the times where money wasn't remotely enough, live was good and motivation was even higher.
> Every job I had was way more tiring than whatever situations I bring myself into.
It depends on your past job experience, if you had a cruisy job it's a wake up call, but if you've been working 16 hours a day and forced to be the jack of all trades because you have no support at the company, it's the same however you don't waste time in meetings, get more freedom and your efforts directly reward yourself.
> The loneliness. The pressure. The constant decision-making. The endless context switching. All the invisible work that isn’t coding. These are the things you learn once you’re already in it.
> It’s more chaotic and demanding than it looks, but also more rewarding in ways you don’t expect.
The first few lines immediately captured my attention because that's exactly how I've been feeling since going solo.
I left my big tech job about 5 months ago and started building my app - it's been a roller-coaster and I think this write-up summarizes how I've been feeling really well. I especially relate with the "constant decision making" - this can get exhausting; I definitely get decision fatigue frequently lol
The loneliness actually sounds like a positive, not a negative. But I’m likely on the spectrum, so there’s that…
Yes, I've been indie for a decade, working remotely with small clients before that, and seclusion has always been a plus. If I need to socialize, there're plenty of spaces for it outside of work.
In fact, I've been actively volunteering for the past four years, and no way I could do that without my flexible schedule that lets me just pause my work for a week and dedicate all my time to my community instead.
I agree on all but launching an app with a side job is less hard than the author expects: not having whatever you are working on to be a successful money maker does add lots of benefits. These include: not having to sell out (adding cheap ads is included in my opinion) just to make some money, take on projects you seriously believe should exist in the world and not because they are lucrative.
The peaks are glorious, the troughs are horrible.
Couldn't have summarized it better
I had some success with side projects a while back, but I haven’t been able to spend much time on them lately. The anxiety is still there, especially with the current layoffs and the state of the economy. My plan is to go indie again once I reach lean FIRE, so money isn’t something I have to worry about and I can focus on building things I enjoy.
Monetization is always the tricky part, since most of the ideas I’m drawn to aren’t things a large audience would pay for. But working on projects I’m personally interested in is what keeps me motivated long enough to actually finish them. It’s easier now too, because AI lets me go from an idea to something usable in just a few hours.
I've just reached lean FIRE, will try to go indie soon. Like you the ideas I have are pretty niche and not things that neatly fit into a B2B SaaS. But I'm hoping I can build at least some income to supplement my investments, doesn't have to be much.
I'm nearly 2 year in and just turned 50. This resonates with me. I'm a parent building an EdTech app for my child. He just plain refuses to read. All he wants to do is play Roblox or watch YouTube videos about playing games (or cats).
The hardest part isn't the code. For me it's when I see VC-backed competitors with full teams. When I look back and remember working in a team of 20 devs with PMs and other support staff, it's hard to plough on alone. I'm glad of AI or this project would have been impossible. When my boy reads a story the app generated and asks if he can read another one, it makes it all feel worth it.
The loneliness is real. No one to bounce ideas off, no one to celebrate small wins with. Thinking about launching on HN soon just to find other builders in the EdTech space.
Still figuring it out. But my child is reading again, so that's a win for me.
I've been on that path since 2019. It's super challenging but so rewarding. Building your own universe, working your own way with total freedom and constraints.
I'm proud of all I've built and shared so far. But I still can't leave my day job. So at this point it's still 40/60.
At work, management asked if I'm willing to come back full-time and take over the team's leadership. No way. It's a costly game to play (huge opportunity cost), but the freedom is so valuable.
I’m here doing it too. It has been 2 years, I can’t believe it. I am thankful for the immense amount of learning I never would’ve done working in a more secure gig (in my market anyway.)
God bless you all, lone swordsmen, and best of luck!
This feels familiar.. I've been on the solo indie track ever since 2020 when society decided to turn hostile. Now 5 years later I'm definitely in some deep uncharted territory. The loneliness was very bothersome, but over time it becomes quite liberating, like a hermit it frees you to discover the deeper things in life.
The work can be insane and makes you question why anyone would be mad enough to forgo the easy path for this. The freedom is just way too good though. Often I'm not exactly sure what weekday it is. When I want to go on a vacation I usually decide that 1-3 days ahead and just go somewhere. Silksong was great too. There's absolutely nothing better. Thinking about a 9-5 office job now fills me with pure dread, I think it would break my soul.
Good luck, you should try to scale up the business and get 2-3 regular contractors (artists, designers, marketing folks) so you have somewhat of a team going. It helps when you have people on a project to throw the ball back and forth a bit.
10 years here. Savings, sponsorships, funding, limited sales. Many many struggles. Not to mention COVID, kids, etc. Attempted to get jobs in the process, didn't work out. It's a hard route to take. A lot of flexibility but very lonely and isolating. You have to be the right kind of person and have more in your life than just your work. The motivation also has to be more than just money, otherwise you might as well quit and do something else. I would love to be happy in a job. Or even moderately accept the tradeoffs but those things also have to have the right setup e.g I don't think fully remote is good for anyone's mental health. Some levels of isolation are good for thinking and productivity, but when there's is idleness, when you have to rely on yourself to fill the time, eventually the hobbies and the time filling habits die off. Nothing replaces human connection. And on one level family and friends are good for that. But on another level working towards something with people. That really gives us a lot of meaning in our lives.
Good luck to all those still trying.
~7 years here. I couldn't have said it better. You summed it up perfectly. Matches my experience entirely. I haven't yet found a working environment where things don't get marred by politics and plainly rude behaviour, especially by managers. I am sort of astounded that friendlier work environments don't seem to exist. I've been in the business about 20 years and have seen better and worse examples. The best places I worked for got close to keeping me, but even those situations were temporary. Eventually, acquisitions happen, the direction of the business changes, the good people leave and then it's time to find yet another job. Between that and the solo work, I have stuck with the solo work for much longer, so despite its challenges, it still seems preferable to me. But boy do you have to take care of your mental health.
As someone on a similar journey, I've found doing open source work on fundamental projects really helps with the feeling of being alone.
>Being independent is lonely
You can find yourself in the same situation at a usual workplace.
Yes, I have found almost any developer job where you code much of the time to be incredibly lonely. Especially when teams are distributed, which seems to be the norm these days.
I went indie some 20 years ago because I needed money and I wanted full control over my life. Did some things right but many things wrong. Unfortunately, there is a price to pay to build your life in an unconventional way. Everything turned out well but it might have easily concluded with a disaster. Luck (or lack of it) plays a significant part however much you try.
What I would recommend to the "new indies":
- Build this on a side with a steady full-time job. If you can't get to a few thousand dollars per month by investing 2-3 hours per week day plus 10-20 hours on a weekend, going full time won't make a difference.
- If you have a family, be careful. You are making high risk decisions but people who depend on you didn't ask you to make a leap into unknown territory. Attempt to pull of indie business is stressful for everyone, may lead to years of strained relationship, and to a divorce.
- Do not share too much business information with your spouse. What is acceptable risk to you may cause dread to your significant other. They don't deserve all the emotional ups and downs that come with running a solo business. Absolutely do share important things because you are in this together - just don't frighten people whenever you are in a bad situation.
- Be mentally stable. If money is tight, if things are unknown, remember this was your choice.
- Don't be too proud - always be prepared to freelance or find a "real job" if needed. Remember that big success can take (many) years or it may never come. Do your best but do not self-destruct.
- Read "The E-Myth Revisited" to learn that your job changes. I was a spectacularly good developer when I started this. Today? Perhaps just a very good one because development turned out to be 10% of the job. You will wear many hats and some of those hats you will absolutely hate. You thought all you'll do is make state of the art software? Yeah, and you will also do sales, website, marketing, customer support, accounting, taxes. You will be exposed to all the shit you were blissfully unaware exists in business while at a steady job because it was someone else's job to handle all that. You will understand your past bosses much better.
All that said, I love the business I built. A beautiful lifestyle business for a quite a few years. It's a stable and growing business now, with a team of 20-ish people in 6 countries. We make great things, and have a great work-life balance.
You can do it, just don't sacrifice everything else. Nothing is certain but do your best. Always be kind to people. Remember to take care of the family first. Be there for them, spend time with them. Kids never grow up twice - what you missed, you missed for good.
(Edited for formatting)
Just regret waiting until I was 35 to attempt it and now I'm already going on 40. Wasted good years on easy mode.
edit:
But this part is wild to me: "I use AI for some things. It helped me fix a few bugs a couple of times"
I can't imagine being solo indie and not leaning hard into Codex, CC, or Composer at this point. To use it only sometimes for the rare bug or copy editing sounds tragic. It's been an incredible boon for me at least - extending, refactoring, prototyping etc. within a complex codebase I wrote myself and in new ones that I guide it on.
> It’s especially bad with new APIs.
It's great if you give it the context
> I can't imagine being solo indie and not leaning hard into Codex, CC, or Composer at this point.
Some of us don't want to because we like our artisanal programming, and being indie is great because we don't have to capitulate to management forcing us to use AI all the time.
That's sort of my feeling. I really enjoy coding.
What's that saying? "If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life."
I use LLMs every day, but not to write my software. I use them like really good personal assistants. They are now a standard (and invaluable) part of my daily workflow.
I'm not exactly "indie" (retired at 55, and working for free), but I can relate to a lot of what's being discussed, here.
2 replies →
> Wasted good years on easy mode.
I wouldn't say I wasted the good years on easy mode, but I did have a misguided plan that I needed to become a team lead and then I could start on my side projects.
I thought I'd have more time because I saw just how little my team leads actually did at work, and no, they weren't doing it behind the scenes, they wouldn't even show up to meetings with the business.
Of course I cared too much, burnt out my best years, quit and now have jack to show for it on the wrong side of 40 when I could have built up my own indie empire.
It seems like these people don't paste in the API documentation and say, " based on the document... ". Did I just reveal too much?
Haha, same
Sounds about right for someone who is building on their own.
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