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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

#711

Post by la_oveja »

3rodents wrote: post #95

The biggest miss from Tailwind is ignoring the rest of the ecosystem. Rightly or wrongly, everyone has moved on to using shadcn's system for components. Tailwind hasn't. Tailwind has excellent components available through Plus which are worth paying for but they're not available where people are, which pushes people towards other libraries built on top of Tailwind. I have paid for Tailwind Plus and I like their Catal…

>everyone has moved on to using shadcn's system for components

shadcn only works in react, tailwind works everywhere

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

#712

Post by TeMPOraL »

gnarlouse wrote: post #457
mmcnl wrote: post #348

Wow, this is a grim reality check: AI hyperscalers taking in billions of revenue, while at the same time putting honest business like Tailwind out of work, without any form of compensation. What happened to "you wouldn't steal a car" etc.? It's only illegal if you're not a trillion dollar company? I have trouble expressing how terrible unjust it feels that AI companies are stealing money from the common people. I hav…

I’m not sure this is such a reality check. I remember figuring this out maybe a month or so after October 2023, when ChatGippity first dropped. Like, if it’s a “do anything platform” won’t the first anything be to cannibalize low hanging anything’s, followed by progressively higher hanging anything’s until there’s no work left? Like play out AI, it sucks for everybody except the ones holding the steering wheel, unles…

> Like play out AI, it sucks for everybody except the ones holding the steering wheel

Not true. Models don't make owners money sitting there doing nothing - they only get paid when people find value in what AI is producing for them. The business model of AI companies is actually almost uniquely honest compared to rest of software industry: they rent you a tool that produces value for you. No enshittification, no dark patterns, no taking your data hostage, no turning into a service what should've been a product. Just straightforward exchange of money for value.

So no, it doesn't such for everyone except them. It only sucks for existing businesses that find themselves in competition with LLMs. Which, true, is most of software industry, but it's still just something that happens when major technological breakthrough is achieved. Electricity and Internet and internal combustion engines did the same thing to many past industries, too.

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

#713

Post by manuelmoreale »

Hammershaft wrote: post #681
paxys wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "key piece of foundational web tech" was released 5 years ago and gained prominence maybe 2-3 years ago. Let's not exaggerate its impact. We were perfectly fine before Tailwind and will be fine after it.

We were not fine before Tailwind, we aren't fine now, and we won't be fine after it until the day we finally recognize that CSS is a terrible foundational standard that deserves to be replaced.

> deserves to be replaced

Replaced by what exactly? Also, when was the last time a foundational piece of tech powering of the web got replaced by something entirely different?

Also who has decided that CSS is a "terrible foundational standard"?

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

#714

Post by krageon »

srameshc wrote: post #10

> But 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. Adam is simply trying to navigate this new reality, and he's being honest, so there's no need to criticize him.

He fired a shitload of people, of course we can criticise him

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

#717

Post by grokys »

timr wrote: post #708

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 also made a horrible life decision in starting a company around developer tools, and I agree. Taking one of the comments from the PR:

> It's insane to blame everybody else for not being able to create a viable business model from an OSS project. Everybody who is using Tailwind is actually SUPPORTING Tailwind. Everybody who is reporting bugs properly is SUPPORTING Tailwind. Everybody who is collaborating and PRs changes is SUPPORTING Tailwind.

> Tailwind grew a lot due to community acceptance and support, and collaborations.

> The only person to blame here is the CEO/Main maintainer of Tailwind. They've made bad decisions, hired coders without knowing how to make enough money to pay them.

> If you want to monetize a free service, you either know what you do or you make mistakes and lose what you've built. It was always a risk; we are not at fault.

> @adamwathan I respect you for everything you've done, but you need to take a few breaths, take a walk, think, sleep, and come back, ask apologize of the community, and start working on solutions/crisis management.

And you always know that when you open the GH profile of people saying such things, you'll see an empty timeline. This particular user has a single repository which he's committed to a handful of times over the last year and has setup a GitHub sponsorship for it.

I try to remind myself that these types of people are a (loud) minority but it's absolutely soul destroying.

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

#718

Post by jcattle »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #699
cluckindan wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why AI coding will eventually degrade into a mess. Enjoy it while it lasts. AI eats up users caring about $company which makes library, library degrades because nobody is paying, $company goes insolvent, library goes unmaintained and eventually defunct, AI still tries to use it. Vibe coding with libraries is a fad that is destined to die. Vibe coding your own libraries will result in million line codebase…

That's presuming libraries need companies backing them to continue to work. That's a bad state of things in the first place.

That's presuming humans don't need money to feed themselves and continue to work.

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

#719

Post by jesse_dot_id »

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…

Bought a license, not a trial. Freudian slip.
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