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Once upon a time you could make a good living building business websites (i.e. the local florist) but even without AI and ML frameworks have already killed that

by munk-a 5y ago

Once upon a time you could make a good living building business websites (i.e. the local florist) but even without AI and ML frameworks have already killed that dead - your florist now probably uses instagram as their website, they might use Squarespace - and if they're hardcore they use Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal. I think a lot of the media thinks that developer hours are spent proportional to the stuff they see and this is the crux of the matter. Ford isn't retaining a team of two hundred devs to maintain their sales pages - it might be like ten or so? While an insurer managing a claims system is probably retaining a boatload of FT devs and also shipping out a bunch of hours to consulting firms. Software programming labour is very much an iceberg problem - the things that look expensive and difficult are trivial and those things are easy to automate away - but we're all working on the hard shit.

didibus 5y ago
> Once upon a time you could make a good living building business websites (i.e. the local florist) Hum, back that up, because I don't think you could ever make a good living with that. No florists is going to pay you the same salaries that going to work for Shopify pays you, small local business just didn't have the means to hire someone to build a website, that's why there was a market for things like Drupal, WordPress and Shopify in the first place. So in reality, those frameworks created jobs, because now you can actually be paid by a local florist to setup and manage a WordPress for them, and the equation works out that for what they pay you and the time it takes you is now profitable. And you have all the jobs opened up from the company developing the frameworks as well.
- munk-a 5y ago
  I've got a friend who coasted through the early 2000s plopping out websites for random businesses for around 1k a pop - for a weeks work that's a pretty good take home. The florist example was probably a poor choice since they tend to have pretty thin margins - but restaurants (while also not having a bunch of money) tend to have advertising budgets that can float a relatively modest cost for plopping out a website.
  - pedrosorio 5y ago
    > 1k a pop - for a weeks work that's a pretty good take home 52k a year with no time off / benefits?
    - recursive 5y ago
      44k with 8 weeks off sounds better.
      - didibus 5y ago
        Glassdoor says a web dev freelancer today in the US averages 30$ per hour and it can range from 60k to 80k a year. So I don't, know, maybe their data is wrong, but it seems to be an even better gig today.
        marc_io 5y ago
        I don't think it is wrong at all. It may be a niche – specially in the US –, but with 46.3% of the world population still without internet access, the long tail is indeed long.
    - nostrademons 5y ago
      That wasn't bad in the early 2000s. Median U.S. household income was $42K in 2000, and you didn't have these $half-mil/year FAANG/unicorn jobs back then.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    Sounds like an ok gig, until you have to support them. I used to throw together and host little sites for friends for free, now I'd rather keep the friendships intact and tell people to just use Squarespace or some other builder.
bamboozled 5y ago
The funny thing is that now, many smaller shops are catching up to what Shopify, Lodify etc do, and offering niche solutions to problems which people are actually interested in paying for, so while a lot of these players were first to take over many smaller players / individuals. People had a lot of time to sit around and tinker and build alternatives.
paganel 5y ago
There's nice money to be made configuring/writing custom modules for Wordpress and Drupal. Your business won't become a unicorn but there's a living to be made on top of those technologies. The same thing when it comes to Shopify and Magento.

by munk-a 5y ago

didibus 5y ago

> Once upon a time you could make a good living building business websites (i.e. the local florist) Hum, back that up, because I don't think you could ever make a good living with that. No florists is going to pay you the same salaries that going to work for Shopify pays you, small local business just didn't have the means to hire someone to build a website, that's why there was a market for things like Drupal, WordPress and Shopify in the first place. So in reality, those frameworks created jobs, because now you can actually be paid by a local florist to setup and manage a WordPress for them, and the equation works out that for what they pay you and the time it takes you is now profitable. And you have all the jobs opened up from the company developing the frameworks as well.

munk-a 5y ago
I've got a friend who coasted through the early 2000s plopping out websites for random businesses for around 1k a pop - for a weeks work that's a pretty good take home. The florist example was probably a poor choice since they tend to have pretty thin margins - but restaurants (while also not having a bunch of money) tend to have advertising budgets that can float a relatively modest cost for plopping out a website.
- pedrosorio 5y ago
  > 1k a pop - for a weeks work that's a pretty good take home 52k a year with no time off / benefits?
  - recursive 5y ago
    44k with 8 weeks off sounds better.
    - didibus 5y ago
      Glassdoor says a web dev freelancer today in the US averages 30$ per hour and it can range from 60k to 80k a year. So I don't, know, maybe their data is wrong, but it seems to be an even better gig today.
      - marc_io 5y ago
        I don't think it is wrong at all. It may be a niche – specially in the US –, but with 46.3% of the world population still without internet access, the long tail is indeed long.
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    That wasn't bad in the early 2000s. Median U.S. household income was $42K in 2000, and you didn't have these $half-mil/year FAANG/unicorn jobs back then.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Sounds like an ok gig, until you have to support them. I used to throw together and host little sites for friends for free, now I'd rather keep the friendships intact and tell people to just use Squarespace or some other builder.

bamboozled 5y ago

The funny thing is that now, many smaller shops are catching up to what Shopify, Lodify etc do, and offering niche solutions to problems which people are actually interested in paying for, so while a lot of these players were first to take over many smaller players / individuals. People had a lot of time to sit around and tinker and build alternatives.

paganel 5y ago

There's nice money to be made configuring/writing custom modules for Wordpress and Drupal. Your business won't become a unicorn but there's a living to be made on top of those technologies. The same thing when it comes to Shopify and Magento.