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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

#741

Post by timr »

grokys wrote: post #717
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 cha…

Yep. I almost edited my comment to include that one as well! "Insane", indeed.

As you note, the tire-kickers were the worst -- people who forked the Linux kernel (with no additional commits) trying to process the entire repo on a free plan, for example, then complaining (loudly) when cut off.

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

#742

Post by quaintdev »

dafelst wrote: post #413
quaintdev wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they tailwind, it sets a precedent for others. They can't pay everyone.

So you're saying that just because they can't pay everyone, they should pay no one?

Yeah I know how that sounds but it's the most logical explanation.

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

#743

Post by llmslave2 »

timeon wrote: post #684
llmslave2 wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being you can't do this with inline styles: "bg-purple md:bg-blue"

Yes but you should not use inline style for that (nor Tailwind).

The whole point of Tailwind is that it lets you do that. You can debate if Tailwind itself is a good idea but thats not relevant to comparing it to inline styles.

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

#744

Post by ben_w »

esperent wrote: post #638
kelnos wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are so many other ways they could be reaching potential customers Like what, exactly, now that most people interact with tailwind purely via AI agents? I started work on a front end project React/Astro/Tailwind project for the first time in about a year, building out with CLI agents, and one things that's changed compared to a year ago is that I have the entire UI basically working and I haven't even looked a…

> I did make an informed decision in choosing this stack, but it's equally likely that the AI could have recommended it to me, and the AI entirely set up the project scaffolding and config for me.

I'm not a web dev, I've heard of Tailwind CSS but my actual knowledge is "I know what the CSS in that name means, therefore it's some kind of styling tool".

One of my experiments before Christmas with Claude Code, was to see what it does in pure vibe-coding mode, where I just say "yes" and then see what kind of mess (if any) it made.

It did not use Tailwind CSS. There was a lot of… if a human had done it I'd say "copy-paste" CSS, but I think it just regenerated it all fresh each time rather than actually using the pasteboard? And it was raw CSS, no dependencies that I noticed.

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

#745

Post by yurishimo »

tshaddox wrote: post #533
dfee wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alternatively, Adam executed the superior pricing strategy. had he charged for recurring licenses, would fewer people have signed up? would his subscriptions also be drawing down? i wouldn't have bought a sub, but i did pay for tailwind premium (and, frankly, didn't use it like i'd've hoped). however, it was a bit of a Kickstarter investment for me. i like Adam's persona, and was happy to see continued investment dow…

Adam presented his case for the lifetime pricing model in this podcast episode in 2023: https://hackersincorporated.com/episodes/lifetime-pricing-is... I believe he succeeding in convincing Sam and Ryan to adopt lifetime pricing for their UI course at https://buildui.com/pricing . I've purchased Build UI, and it was an excellent product, but unfortunately it appears to be completely dead for at least a full year now.…

If Build UI was still making content, they would keep getting sales. There are also other ways to implement a "pay once" model that is sustainable, but it involves designing a much more thought out product roadmap and gatekeeping features behind new major versions where you need to pay for an upgraded license.

Jetbrains has done this for decades now with great success and is the standard sales model for most freemium WordPress plugins. Heck, even Adobe had a similar model until they were convinced they could squeeze out even more profit by charging monthly and trapping customers into subscriptions with high cancellation fees (my words, not theirs).

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

#746

Post by yurishimo »

fud101 wrote: post #676
seanw265 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll piggyback on this to highlight Refactoring UI as well. It's an ebook by Adam and Steve, though I'm not sure if it's technically part of Tailwind Labs or not. This book taught me so much about modern UI design. If you've ever tried building a component and thought to yourself, "hmm something about this looks off," you might benefit from this book. These days some of the examples might be a little bit dated (fashi…

i've read it and retained nothing. I always wonder what people get out of these hyped things that i'm unable to see.

Did you read it cover to cover in one-(ish) sitting? I would argue it's more of a reference book that over time you can internalize into your own design language.

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

#747

Post by llmslave2 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #565
llmslave2 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the disruption comes from theft, is the business not viable?

Just like piracy isn't theft, so too isn't AI scraping. Personally I think copyright should be abolished and I think it's wild to see people on HN turn from hackers to copyright hawks literally supporting massive corporations which are the primary beneficiaries of long copyright laws, like Disney and their Mickey Mouse laws.

I'm not a fan of copyright either but big corporations have abused them for so long, either enforce them to punish these companies or abolish them so these companies die, either one is fine with me. But don't just selectively enforce them to the benefit of these corpos but ignore them when they punish them, that's the worst of both worlds.

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

#748

Post by jcattle »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #722
jcattle wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I struggle to fully grasp everything you postulate. Please help me understand.

Your original point was that libraries do not need companies behind them. From what you have written here a reason for that is that (web) libraries mostly create churn by introducing constant changes. What I think you follow from that, is that those libraries aren't necessary and that "freezing" everything would not do any harm to the state of web development but would do good by decreasing churn of constantly updating to the newest state.

What I struggle to understand is (1) how does AI fit into this? And (2) Why do you think there is so much development happening in that space creating all the churn you mention? At this point in time all of this development is still mostly created by humans which are likely paid for what they do. Who pays them and why?

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

#749

Post by GlacierFox »

refulgentis wrote: post #465
searls wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is madness. Some stories actually have good guys. I don't know Adam directly, but we have plenty of second degree connections. I've benefited immensely from his work, have never heard anyone say a single negative thing about him, and I genuinely believe he's done more to push the web forward with Tailwind than the larger players have done (certainly more than Facebook did with React and Google has done with Angu…

No one said he isn’t a good guy. Just that it was weird to have 15 comments saying “ignore the haters you’re a good guy!” The “madness” here was you replying as if I said he wasn’t.

I'll be sure to avoid you during a time of crisis...

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

#750

Post by heavyset_go »

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 maintained professional etiquette in their marketing and I don't blame them. If you annoy people, they will not recommend you.

I've watched open source projects get lambasted because their developers dared to make a buck. Being conservative with their marketing is what is expected of them even if it isn't fair.

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