Hot-reload doesn't work and there are some errors in empty project

I ran into this, too. I had to:

  1. turn off hot reload in the lower-right popup menu
  2. open the project in visual studio
  3. quit the unreal editor
  4. rebuild the project in visual studio
  5. open the project in unreal editor again
  6. turn on hot reload

(Maybe there was another quit-and-restart-the-editor-again, I forget.)
Then it would work.