[iamphilrae]

The rise of website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify has drastically changed the web design and development industry. As a co-founder and lead developer of a small design/development team, I loved my job and was passionate about creating beautiful and functional websites. However, as more and more clients turned to these DIY platforms, I found it increasingly difficult to justify our higher prices. While our work was more sophisticated and better optimized for SEO, clients often didn't see the value in paying £10,000 or more for it.

Ultimately, I realized that our trade had become commoditized, and I made the difficult decision to sell the business and move on. I transitioned to a new role as a Product Manager, and over the years, I've climbed the ranks to become a CTO at a scaling startup. Although I miss the thrill of being a developer and creating websites from scratch, I've found new challenges and fulfillment in my current position.

If you're facing a similar situation, I'd suggest exploring other avenues to keep your passion for development alive. Consider taking on side projects as a hobby, collaborating with industry friends to start an indie project, or even teaching others about web development. Just be sure to carefully review any non-compete agreements with your current employer before pursuing any new ventures. Remember, although your job may have changed, your passion for creating great websites can still thrive in new ways.

[prawn]

It's not just that the budgets are harder to justify; it's also that prospective clients consider themselves to be experts. Having your judgement and expertise consistently overruled is disheartening and you often end up just following instructions, sapping any joy from the (diminishing and cheaper) role.

I started my web business 25 years ago. 5ish years ago I started photographing and filming travel content, primarily with a drone. More fun, more interesting, better feedback, etc. When building my own web projects though, I still love it.

[echelon]

No. It's that the job to be done is to sell product.

Not build a handcrafted website. Not build a beautiful website.

Provide something that markets and sells something to customers.

And with that perspective, the client really does know better.

The web is ephemeral. Will it even still exist in twenty five years after AI provides all the answers and connections (all we use the web for anyway)?

[jrochkind1]

I think the effect on the job market of (things like) midjourney is much more drastic and steeply immediate than that historical example (not sure if it's a true story or hypothetical? not sure if it was written by chat-gpt?).

I mean, I'm sure many developers over the years have found their jobs disappear, and many contracting companies have gone out of business due to changed market. But at least through now, even with the layoffs, jobs developing websites are still plentiful. (Perhaps that won't be true in the future, sure).

I feel like OP is probably right that they are going to have a lot of trouble getting a job creating 3D art, that the job market has _drastically_ shrunken almost overnight, beyond the effect that wix/squarespace/etc had. (Although of course even in your example, it's a shrunken market)

But maybe I'm not correct?

[iamphilrae]

All I was really getting at was that it sapped the love (and money) out of the job, like the OP was suggesting for them and Midjourney. Once your art/talent has become something that either the common person or a machine can do, your only option as a career is to move on and diversify. It’s unfortunate, but has been happening for decades in all industries. Anyway, just sharing my experience of it happening to me.

[pdc56]

Curious - on a scale out of 10, how much of that was written by ChatGPT?

No offense intended - if the answer is zero, my apologies

[precompute]

I don't think it was written by a LLM, the words have a warmth that generated text lacks.

Plus you can tell it's written as if it's half-spoken.

[savef]

https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/

Using this tool on the comment yields a 77.6% fake score. To give (pretty limited) contrast, a response from ChatGPT gives 99.9% fake, and another comment from this thread gives 0.1% fake.

I assume that means the comment text was GPT-assisted, with some moderate editing from a human.

[iamphilrae]

100% truthfully, I wrote it all myself, but tweaked the opening paragraph with ChatGPT to improve my grammar slightly. It’s a great tool, and one that should not be dismissed, just like spell checkers and the grammar checkers of old in the likes on MS Word. Maybe it does come across a bit ChatGPT-like which is unfortunate I suppose.

As for the suggestions of me asking it to write the comment from prompts, then I’m afraid that’s 100% wrong.

[have_faith]

I’ve noticed a large amount of responses from chatgpt start the second/third paragraph with “however, “ or a similar adverb. It will always strive to provide a “balanced” view, even on heavily one sided subjects.

[PartiallyTyped]

Imho 9:1 written entirely by human.

[lamontcg]

I wonder how much of the original reddit post was written by ChatGPT, it seems to tick a lot of boxes.

[lisp-pornstar]

30%, take your bets

[flerovium]

This feels different because we engineers are being eaten by our own young, but an artist never wanted or bargained for it.

Programming is fun, but humanity has always existed with art. We are slowly crushing something that is good and important.

[devoutsalsa]

Is it common to use website builders like SquareSpace with a backend API?