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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

#702

Post by kshri24 »

Really sucks to see this happen! Been using Tailwind for past few years now.

All the more reason to go closed source. Except for few really vital components that have national security implications (OS/Kernel, drivers, programming languages), which can be funded and supported by universities, Governments etc, I am of the strong opinion that everything else should go closed source.

Enough with this BS. Stop feeding the slop.

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

#705

Post by tomaskafka »

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 think the even more unfortunate truth is that value adds were never a good solution to begin with.

This is the money quote for me - charging for a different thing than the one that brings the value is unsustainable, and AI is accelerating that realization.

Unfortunately, without free distribution, Tailwind would never gain anywhere close to its current mindshare, so there just might not be an opening there (save for a "this year is a year of Linux on desktop" dream of bots and pnpm install paying with micropayments for each download).

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

#706

Post by shunia_huang »

hdra wrote: post #648
paxys wrote: post #644

While I'm sure AI is partially to blame, I feel like the real problem is that (1) they don't have a sensible business model and (2) they have saturated their market. There are relatively few individuals and organizations out there with products that are worth spending vendor money on, especially for something like a CSS library. Companies that do have this need are ready to spend BIG. Tailwind charges a one-time fee…

i remember listening to Adam in one of the podcast he was in (I think it was either the Hackers Inc, or the Art of Product, but could've been something else where he was a guest) - and I remember that he mentioned that idea that there are always a new wave of new developers that they can sell the product to. I still think he was correct. I myself bought tailwindUI as an aspirational purchase, and i doubt people would…

I believe the new UI libraries hit hard more than the AI impact. AI is not always that accurate so eventually if you want to deep dive in, you still have to turn around to the doc. But the new libraries though, they give the market another good choice, especially when shadcn came out, it's so huge that I personally even feels there's no need to go for the raw Tailwind experience, and what's worse is that shadcn is still evolving fast.

I believe the only way to let Tailwind survive is changing the business model.

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

#707

Post by TeMPOraL »

kshri24 wrote: post #702

Really sucks to see this happen! Been using Tailwind for past few years now. All the more reason to go closed source. Except for few really vital components that have national security implications (OS/Kernel, drivers, programming languages), which can be funded and supported by universities, Governments etc, I am of the strong opinion that everything else should go closed source. Enough with this BS. Stop feeding th…

People with that perspective shouldn't have been doing open source in the first place. AI isn't hurting people sharing things, only people who are pretending to share but actually indirectly selling things.

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

#708

Post by timr »

I never personally wanted Tailwind as a product, but really feel for them when I see comments like this one [1]:

> Here's a friendly tip for the Tailwind team that you should already know, but I will repeat anyways: If your goal is monetizing your software, then making your software as easy to use for people's workflows, is paramount.

I made the horrible life mistake of starting a company around developer tools, and I would never, ever repeat the experience because of “friendly” stuff like this. I don’t know why software developers are so entitled, but it’s a serious culture problem.

[1] https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#is...

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

#709

Post by orangepanda »

kelnos wrote: post #632
simonw wrote: post #105

Key comment is this one: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#is... > [...] the reality is that 75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs here yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business. And every second I spend trying to do fun free things for the community like this is a second I'm not spending trying to turn the business around and make sure the people wh…

I feel like if their docs are their only funnel into their commercial product, they need to fire their marketing staff and find people who are competent. There are so many other ways they could be reaching potential customers, even those only familiar with Tailwind's free product.

> they need to fire their marketing staff

Sounds like they did just that. Ereyesterday.

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