The other day, some absolute keyboard warrior-dude spat the word “solopreneur” at me like it was a curse word, and I almost went nuclear. It wasn’t just figuratively either man, I mean, had he been standing within coffee-spitting distance, he’d probably be recovering from third-degree sarcasm burns right about now.
But hey, office guidelines, right. . .
Listen, I usually brush off the casual troll or snarky comment without blinking cause I live in the mud pit of internet discourse. You’d have better luck trolling a chatbot, at least they pretend to have feelings. But this one got under my skin because it wasn’t a word, nah, it was an accusation, a smug dab at anyone who was daring to fly solo in this catastrophic shitstorm economy we’re calling “tech” these days.
Let me fill you in what’s happening around you my friend. . .
In 2025, you are a solopreneur whether you like it or not.
There’s no backup coming.
No HR to hold your hand when your AI-written resignation letter gets you fired by the very chatbot your CEO swore would “disrupt hiring”. Well, it disrupted hiring, that’s for sure, only not in your favour.
Face it. You’re alone now, buddy.
It’s Hunger Games and you now have to pay LinkedIn Premium.
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“Wait, did you just call me a solopreneur? Like… that’s bad?”
“Yeah, dude, totally cringe”, says a guy sipping kombucha with his AirPods shoved so deep, they’re tickling his brainstem. “You’re supposed to be part of something. Like a team, a vision, a. . . “
I interrupt: “A sinking ship?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever, loner”.
Here’s the thing.
The guy wasn’t entirely wrong, well, historically.
Back in the ancient pre-COVID era (remember offices? LOL), “solopreneur” conjured images of gurus wearing rented suits and giving endless TED Talk talks (try to pronounce that fast). But it’s a different world now.
Completely different.
Solopreneur means survivalist today. It means grabbing the steering wheel as the tech world careens off a cliff with the CEO in the backseat tweeting, “AI will fix this!”
“Bro, do I look like a survivalist to you?” my bruv asks, all the while pointing to his latte and ironic vintage T-shirt that cost him eighty bucks.
Eighty bucks?!
Fcuking capitalist!
“No, but your credit card does”, I reply.
“Yeah bruv, you’re officially self-employed now. Your last paycheck just got converted into ChatGPT credits, a LinkedIn premium subscription, an account on Clickup, ToDoIst, Miro, Office 365, Notion, and all the other wallet-drying, cash-sucking subscriptions you need as a solopreneur”.
“Can I pay rent with being a solo-something?”
“Probably, if your landlord’s an AI bot”.
And that’s the reality, friend. Your cushy FAANG job has vaporized.
Remember that corner office you were promised, it is replaced by a Slack thread with a n8n flow. That mentorship you counted on is now a subscription to someone’s half-baked solopreneur newsletter, free edition, of course. The coffee breaks with colleagues don’t exist anymore my friend, cause now it’s just you talking to your reflection in your cold espresso, wondering if AI has already cloned your personality for cheaper.
“Tech is booming!” they keep saying.
Right, except they’re not telling you who is booming where, and with what exactly.
Hint: it is the consultant who is billing your ex-employer six figures to clean up the mess that the AI is leaving behind, or it is the “solopreneur” who is selling how-to guides on “How to not starve in 2025”.
It is the same story everywhere. Where there’s a lot of people starving, there are always vultures to pick on the bones of the corpses.
But one thing is for sure, and that it is certainly not the junior developer who is hoping that AI doesn’t automate his entire existence into absolute nothingness.
“So, you’re telling me my resume doesn’t matter anymore?” my buddy asks, voice trembling with millennial dread.
“Not unless you turn it into an NFT and sell it ironically”, I joke.
“What about my LinkedIn recommendations?”
“Have you considered framing them next to your degree in ‘Optimistic Delusion’?”
Here is your harsh truth injection for the dystopian year of our lord 2025. Corporations will run on hype, ChatGPT prompts, and prayers whispered to the gods of blockchain. They don’t want experts anymore, they want entertainers with AI-friendly job titles like “AI consultant” (ahum) “Prompt Engineer”, or “ChatGPT Therapist”. And if you’re not entertaining enough or you’re too honest about the limitations of AI, congrats man, you’re now a solopreneur, voluntarily or not.
“I can’t be a solopreneur,” my neighbor moans. “I don’t even have a Twitter presence”.
“Xwitter you mean? Didn’t Elon’s AI bots start managing that?” I quip.
“Fine, whatever platform matters”, he retorts. “What’s left, LinkedIn, Fiverr?”
“Yes, the haunted house of professional desperation”, I tell him. “Better start posting inspirational AI quotes or thirst traps about your latest coding bootcamp.”
“But I don’t want to hustle,” he sighs, clearly exhausted by the mere thought.
“Then you’re not going to make rent”, I say, gently but firmly. “Welcome to the freelance Thunderdome”.
It used to be cute ‘n all, this “gig economy” thing.
But wow, it’s a blood sport.
You better stop polishing your resume and start sharpening your pitch to survive the next few months. Don’t waste time telling recruiters that you are “passionate” and “results-oriented”.
Recruiters got laid off last month.
Now you’re selling yourself to someone with a 15-second attention span, ten open tabs, and a vague idea of how AI “should be able” to fix their broken company.
You think the safe route is entrepreneurship maybe? You know, preneuring with two or three other solo’s. Maybe we should call it multipreneuring. How does that sound to you?
Whatever, cause wrong again.
AI just wrote your competitor’s business plan faster than you can pitch yours.
Solopreneurship isn’t optional anymore, it has become a mandatory thing, because nobody’s gonna build your safety net. Nobody’s going to listen to your sob story about being laid off in the “Great AI Purge”. People are however gonna ask: “Can you hustle? Can you pivot? Can you sell yourself without crying?”. . . .can you sell. . . your SOUL??
“But I’m not a sales guy”, says my former CTO buddy. “I’m a technical genius”.
“Awesome. Tell that to your mortgage lender”, I reply.
“I can build things. Isn’t that enough?”
“Sure, if those ‘things’ are your personal brand, LinkedIn profile, and ability to convince strangers you’re a horse with a narwal horn on its head”
Look around, friends.
The future arrived wearing brass knuckles, and it’s not playing fair.
Your fancy degrees mean less than your meme-making skills. Your elegant coding matters less than your “personal brand”. You are not going to succeed unless you are part comedian (hey there!), part salesman (howdy!), part therapist (please have a seat or go lay down, and I’ll listen), and a full-time solopreneur.
Your survival strategy is to dust off your monkey wrench and get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Fix the AI messes out there, plug the holes, hustle relentlessly, and maybe you’ll scrape by long enough for the robots to unionize.
“So… you’re a solopreneur?” someone cautiously asks at a networking event.
“Yes”, I reply proudly. “Self-employed professional disaster-handler”.
“Can I hire you to fix my AI’s sense of humor?”
“I could, but then it’d sound like me, and you definitely don’t want that”.
So, dear reader friend, face it. We’re all solopreneurs now, because no one else is hiring. Embrace the chaos. Own the hustle. It’s ugly, messy, and deeply unfair, but it’s ours now.
Signing off.
Marco
Hey, you know I’m writing as a persona? A sort of cartoonish version of who I really am. If you want to get behind the cartoon, like in that “Take On Me” video, then join my email list for the serious stuff and follow along.
I build AI by day and warn about it by night. I call it job security. Let’s keep smashing delusions with truth. We are the chaos. We are the firewall. We are Big Tech’s PR nightmare.
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