That's all true, and I do "backend" stuff so I'm in the same boat as you, but I think you might still not get the point of the more-projects-faster thing: To b

That's all true, and I do "backend" stuff so I'm in the same boat as you, but I think you might still not get the point of the more-projects-faster thing: To be competitive, web devs need to be working with the most popular framework, which has the most modules which are maintained (for stuff like "log in with facebook" or "publish photo to twitter" or "get weather for visitor's geo-ip location"). All this pre-packaged functionality does require some time to get familiar with, it's an ecosystem on top of a language with many DSLs. So they need to make their team win, or join the winning team early. Or else they don't feel like they can compete. It's a really big marketplace for web sites/apps out there, many small businesses get new-from-scratch websites every 2 years or less ... new shiny design drives consumer interest, it's not like they could afford for the old one to be maintainable anyway.