Disadvantages of Being Solo

I’ve been literally and figuratively out on my own for quite a while now and as you can imagine that has both advantages and disadvantages. I covered some of the advantages of being solo a while back and now it’s time to address the disadvantages.

Every Advantage is a Disadvantage

photo credit: .:Axle:.Raise your hand if you saw that coming. But really it’s true. Pretty much everything I listed as an advantage of being solo also has a negative side. You decide the agenda also means there’s no one to tell you what to do and makes it easy to get lost. When you’re solo you get to set the agenda but you also need to spend thoughtful time considering the agenda or you can just end up wandering aimlessly. You get to decide the technology but that also means you can spend a lot of time evaluating technologies and it’s easy to spend so much time chasing after the latest new thing that you don’t accomplish anything. You don’t have to take outside funding but it’s also much harder to raise outside funding if you do need it since a single person project can often sound like a quaint hobby to bankers and venture capitalists.

No Sounding Board

If you’ve worked in a good, dynamic team environment you’ve probably developed the habit of walking into someone’s office and saying “Hey what do you think about this?”. Sometimes a new perspective on a problem is all it takes to find the obvious solution. Sometimes you find yourself building a complicated bit of software only to have a team mate say “Hey, that already exists”. While it’s a problem for programmers its even worse when you wear the designer’s hat and you’re trying to plan new or improved functionality. What seems like a great idea to you may be of interest to no one else. For the solo entrepreneur it’s important to find an outside counsel for these situations. It may be taking your technical ideas to a forum or chatting with a user about a planned feature. If you just take your own idea and run with it with no additional feedback you might end up spending a lot of time building something that no one else wants.

Wearing Too Many Hats

photo credit: Robyn GallagherWhen you’re solo you get to do a lot of varied tasks but you also have to do things that are outside your core competencies or areas of interest. When I undertook my “big successful site” I found that I actually enjoyed a lot of the non-programming tasks. Promotion and monetization are not something I had thought a lot about before they were thrust upon me but I did enjoy learning them and doing them. Even some sysadmin tasks can be fun - you can squeeze a ton more performance out of Apache by tweaking the settings. But there are plenty of other tasks that are either no fun - answering support e-mails - or I just wasn’t able to do - making the site look nice. If you’re solo and find yourself with a task you can’t manage it may be time to hire outside help. Hiring a designer is pretty much a must if you’re a programmer and building a site and support and sysadmin assistance can be picked up quite reasonably on a part time basis.

So is Solo Good or Bad?

Balancing all the advantages and disadvantages I’d have to say that solo isn’t necessarily the ideal way to run a web development project. If you can find that small group of people who have the ability to commit to a project then run with it but being solo is better than working with people you don’t like or people who aren’t as dedicated or talented as you may be. The disadvantage of being solo can be overcome and if solo is your only chance at running a project you’re excited about then don’t let those disadvantages deter you.