Tailwind CSS Lets Go Of 75% Of Engineering Team After 40% Traffic Drop To Docs From Google
www.seroundtable.com
Adam Wathan the creator of Tailwind CSS posted that he had to let go of 75% of his engineering team because of AI. He said traffic to the Tailwind help documentation is down 40% and that is where most people learn about his solution and then buy commercial products. He added his revenue is down 80%.
  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
    36·
    3 months ago

    Yeah, I’mma call bullshit on this. No sane boss refers to 3 out of a team of 4 as “75%”. Also, everything in the article sounds like a marketing person looking for excuses for his business not working out.

    • toebert@piefed.socialEnglish
      21·
      3 months ago

      I think 75% is apt here, tailwind is incredibly popular and most people wouldn’t know how many engineers they have. If it said “tailwind let 3 people go” I bet most (including me) would assume alright… tailwinds big they may have 30-50 people around… 3 is not too bad right?

      I also disagree with this being entirely bullshit, I think he is right that the impact of AI has made the situation worse for him by impacting his most valuable sales funnel (their own documentation pages). But separately, it is a very populated space (UI libraries) with multiple options to compete with, some of which are rather well established and free - so it was an uphill battle to begin with.

    • toebert@piefed.socialEnglish
      20·
      3 months ago

      “Traffic to our docs is down about 40% from early 2023 despite Tailwind being more popular than ever,” he added. He then goes on to explain that “The docs are the only way people find out about our commercial products, and without customers we can’t afford to maintain the framework.”

      People no longer need to look at their docs or their website because they ask AI how to do something with tailwind instead, so they no longer get to expose and advertise their product (tailwind plus).

      Tailwind plus is a one time payment, not a subscription. If there are no new customers to buy it, their income is gone.

    • jsnfwlr@lemmy.ml
      9·
      3 months ago

      The claim is the as revenue they generate from their documentation site has been cut because LLM programming tools and AI-summaries on search engines reduce the number if people visiting the doc site

  • hobata@lemmy.ml
    4·
    3 months ago

    One can only be happy for those three lucky ones who no longer have to do those stupid monkey jobs at tailwind.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    One extremely loud developer has claimed repeatedly that their project’s recent difficulties are due to AI

    OK

  • pory@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    This headline keeps being repeated by this one for profit CEO. Have you looked at the business model being “disrupted”? It’s ads and upsells for premade CSS widgets.