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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

#801

Post by camdenreslink »

mootothemax wrote: post #643
camdenreslink wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He goes into detail the motivation/decision to do lifetime pricing vs subscription pricing here: https://hackersincorporated.com/episodes/lifetime-pricing-is... The idea is that subscription businesses have churn, and if you can capture the lifetime value of a customer with your one time price, there isn't any difference (other than people feeling grateful when you add new content for "free").

That’s an excellent point, thanks for linking. My takeaway from this thread is: his theory’s great until you discover that your customers are wiling pay *so* much more. On a more positive note, I’ve been blown away by the (largely, one conspicuous troll-like annoyance aside) positive thoughts in the comments. Maybe it’s not too late?

It is true, I paid the lifetime fee for the premium tailwind offering, and they probably could have gotten double that from me with an annual subscription instead.

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

#802

Post by xnx »

K0nserv wrote: post #48
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…

Having worked on a design system previously I think most people, especially non-frontend developers, discount how hard something like that is to build. LLMs will build stuff that looks plausible but falls short in a bunch of ways (particularly accessibility). This is for the same reason that people generate div-soup, it looks correct on the surface. EDIT: I suppose what I'm saying is that "The paid products Adam ment…

> design system ... discount how hard something like that is to build.

This is probably a good thing. The web would be much better off with fewer design systems.

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

#803

Post by lovlar »

What about exploring new, AI-native ways to monetize?

For example, creators behind libraries like Tailwind could sell Claude skills or MCP server solutions.

If I could pay $20 to make my AI agents significantly better at writing state-of-the-art Tailwind code — while knowing that my purchase directly supports the Tailwind community and its long-term sustainability — I would happily do so.

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

#804

Post by 306bobby »

altmanaltman wrote: post #759
port11 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the critics in the thread are… odious. I’ve written down some of the GH handles, because if I’m ever hiring again, I wanna make sure I’d never hire some of these folks. I don’t understand how someone can display such contempt towards the maintainer of a thing they’ve used for free.

"Sorry, we cannot give you the job because even though you're qualified and passed our interviews, you were such a meano to Adam! That is a no-go at this organization" Who trusted you with hiring

Half the people in that thread have this mentality that just using tailwind is enough contribution, so therefore GiVe mY oPuS MoRe InFo

I thought we learned years ago that exposure doesn't keep the lights on. That mentality is nothing but entitlement

One comment stated that "it's not our fault the founder was unable to manage his finances to pay his people" well if open source worked the way people try to act like it does, he shouldn't have to pay anyone, right? But here we are

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

#805

Post by fantasizr »

aurareturn wrote: post #657
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…

They had a business model good enough to employ a few people. Not every business needs to be Google’s Adsense. LLMs are clearly to “blame” here. You can make any component with LLMs from scratch or it will expertly use one of the many existing UI frameworks.

they were never positioned as a unicorn, the question becomes can you be a small business/SMB in software/tech

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

#806

Post by 306bobby »

lionkor wrote: post #795
Griffinsauce wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three. He fired three people. Just posting the "75%" without context is a bit of an odd choice. He explains why in the podcast, but it still feels like he should have specified immediately to avoid assumptions about scale.

He himself said "75%", nowhere in that thread does he say 3 people. That's why the headline is like that.

[flagged]

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

#808

Post by almostlikemagic »

fantasizr wrote: post #805
aurareturn wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had a business model good enough to employ a few people. Not every business needs to be Google’s Adsense. LLMs are clearly to “blame” here. You can make any component with LLMs from scratch or it will expertly use one of the many existing UI frameworks.

they were never positioned as a unicorn, the question becomes can you be a small business/SMB in software/tech

yes, but you have to size your expectations accordingly and can't assume that the sv model will work for your 1-2 person business.

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

#809

Post by h14h »

K0nserv wrote: post #48
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…

Having worked on a design system previously I think most people, especially non-frontend developers, discount how hard something like that is to build. LLMs will build stuff that looks plausible but falls short in a bunch of ways (particularly accessibility). This is for the same reason that people generate div-soup, it looks correct on the surface. EDIT: I suppose what I'm saying is that "The paid products Adam ment…

The Tailwind Team's Refactoring UI book was a big eye opener for me. I had no idea how many subtle insights are required to create truly effective UX.

I think people vastly underestimate just how much work goes into determining the correct set of primitives create a design system like Tailwind, let alone a full blown component library like TailwindUI.

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

#810

Post by JTbane »

ecshafer wrote: post #285
elictronic wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should learn to vote for UBI?

UBI will turn Earth into the Earth of the Expanse. I truly believe it would be absolutely ruinous on man. Our psychology is just not built for that.

I disagree, the only real issue with UBI is the amount of inflation it will cause. Germany has something nearly approaching UBI and they are doing fine.
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