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Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

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Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#351

Post by lifetimerubyist »

echelon wrote: post #264
ericmcer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools like Tailwind are one of the few cases where I totally believe it when the CEO says "we are cutting jobs because of AI". Sucks that anytime you ask AI to generate a site for you Tailwind will have an impact on that.

Anything open source will be turned against its authors and against ICs. We thought it would give us freedom, but all of the advantage will accrue to the hyperscalers. If we don't build open source infra that is owned by everyone, we'll be owned by industrial giants and left with a thin crust that is barely ours. (This seems like such a far-fetched "Kumbaya, My Lord" type of wishful thinking, that it's a joke that I'…

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Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#352

Post by LogicFailsMe »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #284
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funded by an automation tax as proposed by Martin Ford. Not holding my breath on either count. We mustn't upset the 1,000 or so billionaires in this country in any way for they are wise and they are kind and only bad things will happen if we do. But chin up, peasant, each and every one of us can dream of one day being a billionaire as well if only we act as wise and as kind as they do.

> But chin up, peasant, each and every one of us can dream of one day being a billionaire as well if only we act as wise and as kind as they do. (I know this was written satirically) but this is a nice example of doublespeak and I immediately got reminded of it. I wouldn't say that we have reached 1984 level, there is still some decentralization where you can get hosting and then self host from small vps providers as…

As much as I am pro AI and I really am very pro AI, there is definitely an emperor's new AGI vibe amongst the tech bro and billionaire classes. I can only attribute it to a compulsive need to oversell everything and then deliver 25 to 50%, a state everyone is so used to now that if you try to be honest and make claims that state what you can really deliver, they will assume you can only deliver 25 to 50% of what you are claiming and therefore the guy promising twice as much gets the funding.

This makes me happy that I'm nearing retirement but that switch flipping is being delayed by my hourly rate going up for possessing forgotten knowledge. Sigh...

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#353

Post by Aperocky »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #270
risyachka wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most don’t realize is that this will happen to most businesses in all categories as more people rely on ChatGPT and Claude for discovery. No discovery - no business. And same with ads.if OpenAI decides not to add ads - prepare for even faster business consolidation. Those businesses preferred by llms will exponentially grow, others will quickly go out of business

Underscoring the parent comment and adding to it: watching technologists on a site called Hacker News cheer on the centralization of power is really something.

I don't think any power is as centralized as Google is to search about 10 years ago? Or Facebook is to social media in the same time frame? What has changed other than the players?

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#354

Post by threetonesun »

arnvald wrote: post #337
threetonesun wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could go back in time and say this about jQuery. Tailwind's future was always questionable because CSS is growing in new and amazing ways, and wrapping the complexity of new CSS features into helper classes isn't really a sustainable model. That said if someone wants a business model, figure out a way to get paid to get AI to make UIs using newer CSS features, because right now it's quite terrible at it.

The difference is that jQuery was replaced by other libraries, while Tailwind grows in popularity, but due to AI its creator doesn’t benefit from this popularity as much as before

jQuery was essentially replaced by JavaScript (and browser compatibility) getting better, but it continued to exist and grow because it was the de facto way to DOM manipulation, especially if you had to copy and paste off of Stack Overflow, or roll out a framework based UI.

Tailwind being the default choice for AI UIs is not that different, it can continue to grow in usage but the fundamental need for Tailwind has passed.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#356

Post by deckard1 »

echelon wrote: post #264
ericmcer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools like Tailwind are one of the few cases where I totally believe it when the CEO says "we are cutting jobs because of AI". Sucks that anytime you ask AI to generate a site for you Tailwind will have an impact on that.

Anything open source will be turned against its authors and against ICs. We thought it would give us freedom, but all of the advantage will accrue to the hyperscalers. If we don't build open source infra that is owned by everyone, we'll be owned by industrial giants and left with a thin crust that is barely ours. (This seems like such a far-fetched "Kumbaya, My Lord" type of wishful thinking, that it's a joke that I'…

it's a real shame no one warned us this would happen when a bunch of corporatists and opportunists wrested the term "open source" from the advocates of true freedom in the late '90s.

https://www.fsf.org/

But there was money to be made and the friends you thought were friends were just mercenaries with a shiv in their hand.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#357

Post by ryoshoe »

Analemma_ wrote: post #289
SoftTalker wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice fantasy but completely contrary to human nature.

What is your alternative, when the price humans can sell their labor at dips below what is necessary for them to survive? All these takes about "UBI will demolish the human spirit" or whatever are just ridiculous when the alternative is "starve to death".

Just doing nothing isn't great for the "human spirit", but UBI doesn't mean people can't find their own goals to pursue. The idea of something where people are not longer required to work to survive is hard to accept since many people haven't seriously considered how they could meaning outside of their careers

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#358

Post by moralestapia »

waynesonfire wrote: post #282

Maybe you don't need a massive engineer team developing Tailwind and "monetizing it" You, Tailwind, don't get to collect ALL the rent. You were made "successful" because you created something that was OPEN SOURCE and the community chose to adopt your technology because of that. You wouldn't even exist had you not had the foundation, made the implicit statement that, I am willing to share rent by open-sourcing. You wo…

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Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#359

Post by mmcnl »

suyash wrote: post #306
legitster wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can tell from the tone of his post that he isn't blaming anyone directly. They monetized convenience, and something more convenient came along. I think it's more shocking to everyone how quickly something like that happens.

Exactly the business model wasn't strong enough, just upselling templates for hundreds of dollars which AI can churn in few tokens was easy to disrupt.

The business model is strong. AI is stealing traffic/money from creators. That's not a problem with the business model, it's a problem with AI. AI hyperscalers shamelessly monetize other people's work without compensation. Truly an awful dystopia.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#360

Post by YaeGh8Vo »

jesse_dot_id wrote: post #157
sosodev wrote: post #26

The paid products Adam mentions are the pre-made components and templates, right? It seems like the bigger issue isn't reduced traffic but just that AI largely eliminates the need for such things. While I understand that this has been difficult for him and his company... hasn't it been obvious that this would be a major issue for years? I do worry about what this means for the future of open source software. We've lo…

I bought a Tailwind Plus trial a few years ago and I've been using AI tools since they came out. I typically find the block or template I want to use via the Tailwind Plus site and then feed it into Claude Code and ask the agent to modify them as required. This has been working well for me. I think the problem is that the Internet is absolutely full of people who expect free shit and never even consider paying for it…

Ironically, some of the same people that are ready to pay $200.-/month Claude subscriptions.
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