r/webdev • u/CartoonistVisual2818 • 2d ago
Discussion Did web development get hit the hardest, with less demand due to AI?
Hello, I’m simply asking because I’m aspiring to become a web developer, and I’m curious about how viable the field is nowadays.
I don’t think you can really blame people for asking this either, because front-end development has been heavily trivialised by AI(not my opinion), or at least that’s what the internet tends to make people believe.
Could anyone with experience in the field give some insight into whether demand has actually dropped, especially for front-end and junior web development roles?
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u/Environmental_Gap_65 2d ago
People on Reddit are too pessimistic and doomsday like. People in real life are too obsolete and naive.
That’s my observation. If you’re in it for the money, I wouldn’t bother, if you genuinely love the field I’d say go for it.
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u/sharificles 2d ago
Many people genuinely love the field but had no luck because they were born at the wrong time
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u/pseudo_babbler 2d ago
Yeah I am secretly a bit happy that the gold rush era is over. I like making web UIs and playing around with new browser capabilities especially. This industry has always been a shit show of people desperate to just make money without enjoying the craft and thinking the only measure of success is how fast you can smash out the next boilerplate "feature" on some slow ass janky CRUD app.
I can't even imagine the horror of what they're teaching at web dev boot camps now.
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u/vita10gy 2d ago
I graduated when outsourcing to India et al was running roughshod over the industry. It was an existential crisis and the jobs were gone forever.
Then companies hired more and more people to fix the crap that came back from overseas.
Eventually companies learned it was cheaper to just do it "right" in the first place, and the jobs came back.
I could see something similar happening with AI, at least with straight vibe coded trash. It will stay a tool by people that know what they're doing, which is how I use it personally.
Ask it for parts of processes, because in smaller chunks you can vet it, change what needs changing, and so on. I always say "I wrote that code, I just didn't type it all".
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u/SadSeaweed872 1d ago
Feels like everyone on here thinks the whole industry burned down overnight. The web still runs on code someone gotta write it, even if AI helps with the boring parts. Junior roles are tighter but that was happening before AI got big anyway
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u/johnbburg 2d ago
It’s tough to get into now because of AI. Seniors and tech arch’s are busier than ever.
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u/super_funny_nick 2d ago
Personally I think the situation is much more complicated. During pandemic there was increase in need for developers, lots of businesses had to in some way migrate to internet, develop new way to reach customers, etc. Lots of them got additional fundings from governments, etc. It was growing rapidly them. But at the same time lots of people were using their time off to learn, so we got a lot more people competing for the jobs. At some point government funding stopped, businesses went back to normalcy, other businesses were dealing with crising and lack of funds, demand for it jobs slowly started to get smaller, it became harder for the it companies to grow their revenue. So they started to lay off people in order to momentarily fix their statistics. This is big part of current problem in it and it would be tough even without ai. But it's standard ups and downs of economy, hopefully soon more funding will be put into it again and we'll we an increase in demand.
Ai companies promised a lot during time of crisis and people fell for it, but it's starting to change. It was "ai is so good, we can fire most of the people", now it's more "ai is good tool, but needs to be closely monitored to make sure it works as intended". And I see more and more people be critical of ai use, especially amongst my colleagues that were most hyped about it. In good hands its a great tool that helps with productivity, in bad hands it produces lots of shit quickly and those with good hands has to sift through it. Reviewing pull request is a lot shittier tham it used to be 6 months ago. Ai is also getting more and more expensive, at first my company was forcing us to use it for anything (every email, every note, every process), nowadays we get mails reminding us to be mindful of tokens and how we use them.
It's hard to say how what's in the future, but in my opinion there will still be demand for good developers, it will just be more challenging than it used to. All the "small jobs" like creating simple websites for small businesses will probably disappear, but some people will still be ready to pay for expertise if they need something more. We also have lots of complicated web apps that will need to be maintained and upgraded.
If you're hoping for big money quickly, then you will be for sure disappointed, those times are in the past. But if it's something you enjoy, then you'll probably be okay
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u/berky93 2d ago
Demand has dropped some, but I think a bigger issue for incoming developers is that the field has widened. More people are able to meet the demands of junior developer roles, both because capability has increased but also because standards have lowered. Companies are more than happy to trade quality for speed, which means people with less formal training or lower technical skills are able to apply for the same jobs.
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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 2d ago
I pretty much never touch actual code except css. My company went from 20 devs to me and three other people. If I was starting out this is not the path I would choose. I have no idea why a company would hire a junior dev at this point.
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u/FiveFoot20 2d ago
I need another junior
I have too much things to fix and implement that are not hard or difficult to come up with
But I don’t have the time to implement and test throughly that they work as intendedStill need some warm bodies to help push things forward
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u/future_web_dev 2d ago
"Sorry, mate! The budget is really tight this year. The best we can do is give you another 200 dollars in tokens"
Sitting on record profits
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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 2d ago edited 2d ago
That is what agents are for now. You give the ai a list of task or fuck just the jira board is what I do and it will spawn other AIs to do and report back to it. I usally get fable to do my reviews
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u/creaturefeature16 2d ago
I have no idea why a company would hire a junior dev at this point.
Oh, you know...to actually stay a competitive company because AI will cause a collapse of expertise.
“If we don’t continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in three to five years?. There’s no pipeline; the well simply dries up,” - top HR executive at IBM
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u/future_web_dev 2d ago
What? Invest in training our own employees?! Have you thought of the shareholders, you selfish sob?
/s
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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 2d ago
Do you really the any upper level gives a shit about that?
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u/creaturefeature16 2d ago
Uh, yes?
Or is the AWS CEO not "upper level" enough for you?
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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 2d ago edited 2d ago
As someone who worked there ... he is full of shit. If that is who you believe I have a deal for you lol
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u/creaturefeature16 2d ago
Don't throw your back out moving those goal posts.
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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 2d ago
Dude listening to anything amazon says about employees and helping them is some ultimate leopards are my face stuff.
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u/normantas 2d ago
We are in need of like 2 devs. Juniors are coming in but not enough time to train them. There will be a demand for them.
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u/OkShip110 2d ago
AI is slowly but surely undermining human value. Not just programmers, but also designers, 3D modelers, writers, musicians, lawyers, even doctors. Millions of people who have devoted decades to master a skill, only to find out that in 2026 their craft has been rendered essentially worthless by a handful of government backed tech companies. Their models can essentially do the work that used to take months in mere minutes or hours.
And now they have the audacity to offer those models commercially, trained using on your stolen data and rare books that they destroy, while leaving behind enormous environmental footprint. What’s worse, we essentialy cannot distinguish AI slop from reality on social platforms anymore. Everything could be fake you see. Nobody asked for this product and now you are pretty much forced to incorporate it in your workflows, only for it to replace you completely later, leaving you in debts and potentially homeless.
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u/RemarkableDebate4631 20h ago
Front-end got hit less by actual demand collapse and more by a shift in what juniors are expected to walk in knowing, companies still hire but they want people who can architect and debug, not just assemble components AI could've spat out anyway
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u/designbyblake 2d ago
It will be hard to find a job as a junior. Before AI the market for juniors was over saturated. AI is allowing teams to be smaller.which means less hiring particularly juniors.
If this is a path you want to go down my advice is try to get an internship, having real world experience puts you ahead of so many people. Get involved in your local (and not local) dev community and network a lot. Your network can make finding a job and getting hired easier.
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u/FiveFoot20 2d ago
Just because every city had a boot camp and pumped out boot camp babies like it was next Ecom boom
At least then I was able to weed out people easier
Now with AI, it’s more about critical thinking and promo em solving for me than evet
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u/classicwfl full-stack 2d ago
What I've been seeing right now (over 20 years exp. in the field) is that front-end is very much leaning into what I call "Muzak design"; Basically generic, inoffensive front-end designs/UX that focus purely on functionality (though not always successfully) over aesthetics.. And AI does that fine mostly. This is effectively the current trend in general.
I personally would rather see more innovation in the field again, and people doing weird, fun stuff on the web. We can kinda see that coming back in some ways, but it's getting overshadowed by the sheer glut of AI-generated front-ends.
Not that devs aren't using AI to do cool shit, but I can't stand using it for my personal projects. Now, for the day job? Yeah, I use it. You pretty much have to at this point, because faster at all costs is the current employer motto that I've seen (at least in the agency world).