diff --git a/.bazelignore b/.bazelignore
index e69de29bb2..a603a7bd8a 100644
--- a/.bazelignore
+++ b/.bazelignore
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# Normally these are ignored, but if you're using a custom
+# build of Bazel with a custom --output_user_root value, Bazel
+# tries to follow the symlinks of the other builds and finds
+# the WORKSPACE, BUILD, etc files and tries to build them.
+bazel-rules_python
+bazel-bin
+bazel-out
+bazel-testlogs