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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

#721

Post by gterez »

freedomben wrote: post #6

Very sad to hear, I bought Tailwind UI years ago and although it was a lot more expensive than I wanted, I've appreciated the care and precision and highly recommend buying it (It's now called Tailwind Plus) even still (maybe even especially now). Mad props to Adam for his honesty and transparency. Adam if you're reading, just know that the voices criticizing you are not the only voices out there. Thanks for all you'…

Early customer here too. Tailwind UI was one of my best purchases in the sense that it helped me learn and use Tailwind in the best way possible, by showing me, not telling me.

It was never sustainable as a product/business, as this pricing model requires constant growth. What I've seen along the way was a heavy pivot towards React (which left me wanting: I mostly use the Vue components & the HTML/JS components with Astro.js in the projects I work in) and even in the case of React, they haven't managed to arrive at a full, mature component library offering (while others have!).

TL;DR: I'd be struggling to justify it as a purchase for a new user now, even before factoring AI in.

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

#722

Post by TeMPOraL »

jcattle wrote: post #718
TeMPOraL wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's neither here, nor there.

AI is destined to destroy software industry, but not itself.

Software does not decay by itself (it's literally the whole point of using digital media over analog). Libraries do not "degrade". "Bit rot" is an illusion, a fictitious force like centrifugal force in Newtonian dynamics, representing changes that happen not to a program, but to everything else around it.

The current degree of churn in webshit ecosystem (whose anti-patterns are increasingly seeping in and infecting other software ecosystems) is not a natural state of things. Reducing churn won't kill existing software - on the contrary, it'll just let it continue to work without changes.

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

#723

Post by la_oveja »

wltr wrote: post #720
la_oveja wrote: post #710

looking at their partner list, which is 5000$ a month, and theres 16 partners, thats minimun 80k$ a month. just an insight.

Do you think they’d survive?

i have no idea, even less in usa, but with 80k a month income you could def pay for a dev team and infra in some countries.

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

#725

Post by grokys »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #698
matt-p wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I'm quite curious on what feelings are about still putting it in a public GitHub repo? AI models will train on your codebase, unethical actors will still take it and not pay. Others can give the .zip to Claude and ask it to reimplement it in a way that isn't license infringement. I think it really turns open source upside down. Is this a risk worth taking or best to just make getting the source something tha…

Or maybe ask yourself why are you doing open source in the first place? AI training on your code is success if you care about your code being genuinely helpful to others. It's a problem only if you're trying to make money or personal reputation, and abusing open source as a vector for it.

>Or maybe ask yourself why are you doing open source in the first place?

I, like everyone started work on OSS because it's fun. The problem comes when your project gets popular - either you try to make it your job or you abandon the project, because at a certain point it becomes like an unpaid job with really demanding customers.

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

#726

Post by utf_8x »

la_oveja wrote: post #710

looking at their partner list, which is 5000$ a month, and theres 16 partners, thats minimun 80k$ a month. just an insight.

It would appear that they pay their employees fairly well, as seen in this old job posting [1] (not all levels will make this much of course but it gives you a general idea, almost 300k a year is a lot even for a staff engineer).

$275,000 is almost $23,000 a month. Take that times N amount of employees, and other business overhead, and suddenly $80k a month is literally peanuts.

[1] https://tailwindcss.com/blog/hiring-a-design-engineer-and-st...

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

#727

Post by sureglymop »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #642
sureglymop wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, why is that even surprising? Tailwind is essentially a frontend css stylesheet. What business could there possibly be around that? I understand, they have UI kits, books, etc. but just fundamentally, it was never going to be easy to monetize around that long term, with or without AI.

The comment you are responding to said their revenue is down 80%. So they did monetize training and services, and I don't see how that would have been a problem long term if AI didn't come along and make all of that unnecessary.

Yes. The point I was trying to make was that after the initial hype disappears, sales in those categories would probably taper off regardless. But it is purely my opinion.

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

#728

Post by kshri24 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #707
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.

There is no one in this World who will do things purely for altruistic purposes. Even if not for money, it would be for something intangible that ingratiates the Self (fame for example).

I can't find a single example of a software developer who has put out software purely for some altruistic purpose without any returns on that investment (direct or indirect).

Building a sustainable business model was a great way to justify open source. Not anymore.

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

#729

Post by globular-toast »

cluckindan wrote: post #673
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.

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…

Yeah, this pattern happens all the time:

1. Plant new trees,

2. Eat fruit from trees, get used to delicious fruit,

3. Planting trees hard, easier to wring out more juice from existing fruit,

4. Forget how to maintain trees, trees die, go to 1.

We are entering stage 3.

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