Looking elsewhere, a reflection

June 6, 2025

On Tuesday, I read an article by Robb Owen that deeply resonated with my craftsman soul. Reading it gave me some hope about the future^[1]. And it reminded me that there are a lot of us that still care about craft and that we can band together to help us each other out.

Earlier this year, I watched a video where Kevin Powell read through Josh Comeau article, The Post Developer Era. Kevin would read a section and then take some time to share his own thoughts and commentary. I thought I would try something similar with Robb’s article but in written form.

I would suggest reading Robb’s article in it’s entirety on his site before reading this article further. You can get the whole perspective and then come back and read my thoughts and see the context.

Looking Elsewhere by Robb Owen

Used with permission from the author

There’s a word in the Welsh language that you might have come across, part of that wonderful class of words that defy direct one-to-one translation into English: Hiraeth.

Broadly speaking, hiraeth is a deep sense of longing for some other time, people or place where you felt at home. It has been described as the lingering presence of absence; not really nostalgia, but a sort of gnawing, idealised homesickness to be somewhere else and be part of something else that no longer exists or, perhaps, has yet to come.

I don’t have much to say about the introduction. I think he does a good of framing what he is about to say.

Hype-driven development.

I—as I suspect was the case for many of us—entered the industry wide-eyed and optimistic. Finding my feet in tech in the early 2010s was exciting and everybody talked with naïve passion and a pioneering spirit about building positive change for the future. There seemed to be a real drive to hone our craft, to work tirelessly for the benefit of our users, for our work to be taken seriously as more than just programmers and designers. We were makers. Web Artisans. Shit, it seems almost laughably pretentious now. Somewhere along the way though, with a few success stories under the industry’s belt, the profits just got too big and something fundamental shifted. Turns out that there’s no time for craft when there’s another round of funding to secure.

I came to the industry much earlier than Robb did, in the very early days. It was an exciting time of discovery, learning, and growing in an ever-changing craft. I learned about the importance of user experience from Steve Krug. I consumed articles on Digital Web, A List Apart, and enjoyed the writings of other craftsman who were sharing through their blogs. There were so many people experimenting and pushing this evolving trade into new territory. And that continued into my second decade in the industry in the 2010s. People cared about the work and the people that were using it.

Yes, something turned in the industry and craft on the Web became less and less valued until we find ourselves where we are today.

Now, at the mid point of the 2020s, it’s as if the big-tech manifesto of “move fast and break things” has reconditioned an entire generation of makers to prioritise speed and efficiency over quality and care. With our standards lowered, the shift inwards has also become more pronounced. Where industry peers were once chatting about what they were making and for whom, we now seem fixated solely on what we’re building with. We have sleepwalked into becoming an industry that makes tools for toolmakers; an unending tech-bro-robourus of solutions in search of problems, masking purpose with hype for the next big thing. And that hype-cycle is only getting faster. In just a few short years we’ve seen the crest and crash of countless industry darlings from JavaScript frameworks, to Blockchain and NFTs, right up to the current flavour-of-the-week: AI. But, as with every well-intentioned new product or clever solution, that-which-wasn’t-considered becomes a vector for harm and AI finally sees the tech industry going after its own workers. Not content to have disrupted hospitality, taxis and delivery-drivers-as-a-service, companies are now axing their contractor budgets or laying off record numbers of staff as they chase the spoils of generative AI.

I observed this same thing. I saw things begin to shift around 2015/2016. The rise of frameworks and tooling. I began to see less quality on the Web. More and more sites looked the same. I remember that someone wrote an article where they presented three generic designs that they felt like described just about every website. (If you know what I am talking about and can link me to it, I would appreciate it.) Everything seemed to be about hype and less was being said about the actual craft of a site. That is not to say that it was completely silent but it was being drowned out by all the hype and the hot dramas^[2] that exploded about every week on Twitter.

I was a victim of a layoff last year. My agency decided to eliminate the front-end development team due to changes in the business. At first, I thought it might just be the company. But then I began to realize that it was a part of a much bigger trend that was disrupting so many people’s lives. And it continues. And I have been shocked to see how it has affected some pretty well known people in the industry. People I respected and had made the craft and the industry a better place.

I want to make it clear that I am not against AI, much in the same way as I am not against hammers—they are both tools—but I am equally not going to advocate that you use your hammer to demolish the work of another artist for personal financial gain. It’s how these tools are being used makes the difference and, currently, the industry is drunkenly swinging its ill-gotten sledgehammer at the foundations of our societies. In the face of this reckless pursuit of hype-over-craft, I can’t help but find myself longing to be part of something that makes good on the industry’s early promise of responsible change. Thankfully, I know I am not alone in this. This time last month I attended All Day Hey in Leeds and talk tended towards how we might change the course of the industry. As I’ve been gathering my thoughts in the days since, discussion online has also turned to many of same issues. At times it can feel like these conversations are eulogising our careers but I don’t see any lack of desire to put the work in, rather a deep cultural burnout at the circumstances and motivations currently driving change in the industry. Despite it all, we still care.

Amen. Head nodding along with all of this. I had just read an article on Monday that left me feeling pretty low about the future of not just our industry, but for everyone. Behind the Curtain: Top AI CEO foresees white-collar bloodbath was written by the folks at Axios. It predicted a very significant disruption to our society as millions would lose their jobs and find themselves in need of pivoting in their career because their skills were no longer needed due to AI (LLMs).^[3] It paints a bleak picture for entry-level jobs. That really hits home with me as I have two kids on the cusp of entering their professional lives over the next 3 years.

I was also deeply disgusted with the attitudes of some of the leaders of companies and of AI companies. There is no compassion. They don’t seem to care how their decisions are going to hurt so many people across so many parts of our society. There is no responsible change in those pulling the strings whether in business or in the government.

I am glad that Robb put forth this piece because it gives some hope that we don’t have to eulogize our careers or mourn for something lost. I still care. And I encouraged that there many who still care. I was encouraged by the many posts about this article that I saw on Mastodon and Bluesky on Tuesday.

Yes, many of us are feeling the deep cultural burnout because of what is currently driving our industry. But I feel like this article could help to rally the troops to resist that feeling and have hope that we can still make a difference in charting the course of the future. More thoughts as the article progresses.

One other thought. I am becoming more and more against AI because of the way that it is being wielded. I really appreciate Mandy’s thoughts that AI is more of an ideology than a technology. I don’t like how the tool is being used for the most part. I don’t like that they have stolen from others to train their LLMs. I don’t like the environmental impact. Who cares if LLMs can find a cure for cancer if it destroys the planet in the process. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36)

It all begs the question, what might the future look like for those of us who still commit ourselves to craft? Fortunately for us, tech is not the first industry forced to defend itself against dubious practices and it likely won’t be the last. Perhaps those industries that survived could be an example. What could we learn if we were to look elsewhere?

I am glad that Robb suggests some ways forward by looking at what other industries have done in the past against similar challenges.

Raising the standard.

When it comes to painstakingly technical, user-centred work there are few industries more famous than the tailor-made fashion houses of Paris. Training for years with traditional methods, pushing the boundaries of their craft, making individual garments with great precision and with only the finest materials; for many, they represent the archetypal “Artisan”. But, for every artisan who cares about the craft, there’s always someone else willing to compromise it for a quick buck. Throughout its storied history, the high-fashion industry has seen it all: corner cutting, poor quality materials, labour threats from mechanisation and rampant design piracy. Nowadays, we know many of these practices as fast-fashion, but they have been a thorn in the side of the fashion industry since the 1700s. That’s not to say that the industry didn’t fight back. Originally managed by a mercantile guild system these guilds would grow into an association who, by the late 1800s, would require that ateliers meet a baseline technical and material standard to be able to sell their garments within the city. Later, when piracy got out of hand, the heads of the industry implemented a further system of copy-protection by meticulously photographing and cataloguing each new design. Time after time the ateliers saw off threats to their livelihoods, but the industry’s biggest challenge would come with the fall of Paris to Nazi Germany during World War II.

It is interesting because I have found the same to be true in the Web industry throughout my career. There have always been those who look for ways to do it cheaper, cut corners, or just deliver a less quality work. I guess I naively thought that those people would always weed themselves out because people would recognize the value of higher quality work. I have always thought that doing good work and caring more than the client would put me in at an advantage. But I still lost my job and had a very hard time finding a new opportunity. I got lost in the masses of other job applications that flooded every available opportunity. I seriously wondered if I would have to pivot in another direction and away from this industry.

Seeing the strong reputation of tailor-made fashion within France, the fascist occupiers immediately sought to seize the industry’s design documentation, dismantle the ateliers for raw materials and forcibly relocate those involved in production to Berlin, or far worse. In the face of the new regime, some ateliers immediately capitulated and dismissed their workforces. Many others did whatever they were able to safeguard their industry and those working within it. When liberation eventually came in 1945, the surviving ateliers of Paris, led by Lucien Lelong, came together again to codify their practices and ethics into law. In contrast to the association rules of the 1800s, this new legal standard would prevent any further attempts to undermine their craft by formally separating their work from fast-fashion practices. The law would not only ensure that only garments produced with certified materials and to exacting technical standards would be allowed to bear the name “Haute Couture”, but they would also stipulate the location and number of employees an atelier must have, thereby safeguarding many of the ancilliary professions and practitioners that contributed to their work.

Fast-software.

Chasing trends and profits, cutting corners and undermining skilled workforces whilst providing ill-fitting, broken products with no regard for longevity; the modern software world sounds a whole lot like fast-fashion. With that in mind, two aspects of the ateliers’ pushback are particularly interesting to me – the first is the role of standards.

So far I have made many references to “craft” and “quality”, but those terms can be hard to define. Motivations are more tangible. Compiling their accumulated knowledge in service of the customer allowed the ateliers of Paris to define precisely what “good work” meant for their industry. With such a baseline in place, should the primary motivation for producing work be anything other than meeting the customer’s needs, the work fails by default. By also treating their standard as a living document, ateliers are able to focus on the betterment of their output, adapting and evolving their practice to meet the changing challenges of their industry.

It should hopefully come as no surprise that web industry is already home to several evolving standards for the semantic use of HTML and Accessibility. The web-standards movement and WCAG are the cumulative work of years of user-focused research and provide us with a jumping off point for doing work in service of our users. Meeting standards must be intentional though and for a long time developers have neglected them. This presents us with an opportunity. Though AI has access to a vast dragons-hoard of code, much of that code does not follow standards and, by consequence, the output of LLMs and design-tooling tends to be a chaotic rat-king of <div>s with no regard for semantics or accessibility. In this context it becomes clear that standards are a vital point of differentiation for craft-led practice. By design, these initiatives put the user experience above the developer experience. Following standards immediately shifts emphasis back to the “why” over the “how” and recentres the user within our work. If we collectively commit to following standards, we commit to “good work” by default.

I am glad to work in an industry that has standards. I appreciate the tireless work of Molly E. Holzschlag, Jeffrey Zeldman, and so many others. I count it a privilege that I got to contribute to the Web Standards Sherpa site^[4]. I have not liked the trend that I have seen in our industry to not uphold these standards or to think that they are a relic of the past. I hate to see them neglected. I am a strong advocate of progressive enhancement. I appreciate that there are some that are still writing about it or thinking about how we could reframe the discussion. But it seems the loudest voices don’t seem to take it into consideration.

There is a common rebuttal to the use of standards, in that it is simply too hard and too time consuming for one maker to amass the level of knowledge to follow these rules end-to-end. The problem with this idea though, is that it assumes that only one maker should hold knowledge. This is the second aspect of the ateliers’ pushback – solidarity with adjacent professions. The heads of the industry understood that respect and accountability to one another would enforce their standards. To understand a bit more about how accountability to adjacent disciplines can enrich craft, let’s take a look at another industry.

I think about this shows that there are different mindsets or perspective at work in the developer community. I think Josh Collinsworth did a good job describing this a couple of years ago when he talked about why Tailwind is such a divisive subject^[5]. He makes a distinction between two different types of developers–builders and crafters. The focus of both of these is what part of the job they consider most important. It comes down to what each of them values about the process of bringing the product to life.

Builders value getting the work done as quickly and efficiently as possible. They are making something and they are eager to bring it to completion.

Crafters, on the other hand, see the frontend as the product itself, not just something to get through to reach their goal. Speed is not the issue and they enjoy the challenges of using CSS and can find a tool like Tailwind getting in their way.

– The quiet, pervasive devaluation of frontend by Josh Collinsworth

I think this distinction is helpful in thinking about what Robb wrote. It seems that many don’t see the value in taking the time to amass the knowledge to follow these standards. Builders are not looking so much to amass knowledge as they are to get the job done. Crafters, on the other hand, value the knowledge they gain and continue to amass it through their career. Yes, it is hard and time-consuming but I think it is worth it. I am not saying builders are wrong and crafters are right. But crafters are going to be naturally drawn to respecting these worn paths and keeping others accountable.

The case for blurred specialisms.

To be honest, it’s hard to keep mentioning the idea of web artisans without addressing all of the millenial-hipster jokes about organic, free-range TypeScript, artisanal hyperlinks and farm-to-<table> layouts. The thing is though, the farm-to-table movement and its reinterpretation of the restaurant industry is a genuine example of how solidarity feeds craft. With that in mind, let’s just lean into it for a moment.

Widely attributed to the work of Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, farm-to-table dining presents cooperation as industry counterculture. In the face of questionable low-quality-high-profit practices overtaking the restaurant industry, the movement instead asked what might happen if they focused instead on sustainability, quality and shared knowledge. The big picture looks a little like this:

In order to provide their diners with the best experience, a chef will spend years honing their technical skills. At the same time however, the chef understands that their execution is reliant on a foundation of quality ingredients, so seeks out growers with deep knowledge of their terroir. Each knows their own limitations but, as their domains overlap, the chef and grower might then work together to enhance flavour or develop new cultivars that can stand up to different cooking techniques. With time, the process becomes reciprocal. The qualities of the grower’s produce inspires the chef’s work which influences the grower to apply their skills, which further elevates the chef. In this kind of scenario, it is not uncommon to see a grower’s name featured prominently on a menu alongside the ingredients that they have worked hard to cultivate. The grower is not just a supplier, but respected as an equal artisan.

My takeaway from this concept is that, in order to master your own domain, the boundaries of your specialism will often blur with specialists in other domains. With a mindset of mutual respect, the whole process of making is not a cycle of hype, but one of intentionality and growth.

The jobs that I have enjoyed the most were ones where I had the opportunity to work with a lot of talented people who each brought their own skills, knowledge, and talent in a certain domain. I loved partnering with other developers, designers, strategists, and project managers who each was a master of their domain and who together elevated each other’s work. I also loved working with clients who treated us more like partners than a vendor. Where they valued our input and listened to our ideas rather than just telling us what they wanted us to do or not listening to suggestions that would better their product.

One thing that I have always appreciated about our industry is the sharing of knowledge. One of the reasons that the World Wide Web was created was to share knowledge and collaborate. I feel like that spirit infused our industry early on. I am grateful for the resurgence of the personal website and for more people taking the time to write posts and articles than to try to share something in 240 characters. Sharing knowledge has always been a strength in this industry.

But should designers code, though?

At this point you might quite rightly be thinking that blurred-specialisms sounds a lot like the T-shaped skillset touted by corporate leadership. You might also be thinking, “we’ve already tried that, how can that be a future for the industry?”

The difference, again, is one of intentionality.

A top-down, KPI-driven approach rarely cares about craft over profits. This means, sadly, that the common implementation of T-shaped workers expects them to carry out the roles of other specialists in addition to their own. Take full-stack development or the age-old “should designers code” debate as examples – From a c-suite perspective, these are matters of efficiency; surplus roles can be eliminated if one worker can step up to do two or three functions within the organisation. By that same logic, if AI tooling can be trained well enough, it has the potential to replace all roles. Remember, line goes up if wages go down.

I have hated the trend in our industry toward “full-stack.” I think I even say a job description last year for a full-stack designer. Businesses want workers with deeper breadth. There is not a value of multiple people who are deep in their domain collobarating together. I always felt like front-end development had too many things that you needed to know. Then the expectation was to also know the backend and business logic. I think about what Bilbo says at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring. “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” At times I felt stretched just doing trying to keep up with the responsibilities of the front-end without having to also take on more.

One of the most striking things to me about the life of Jesus is that he was very ineffiecent. His focus was on people and not efficiency. Sometimes that put him at odds with the people who followed him. Caring about people, working with people, and taking time to relate to people is not always efficient.

Art and craft are not efficient. Both of these disciplines value experimentation. Both of these disciplines see the value of moving in one direction but willing to pivot when a better solution presents itself. Good design and creativity take time and can be very inefficient. I spent almost three hours last week working on a solution only to have to throw it away. But I learned from it and was able to come up with a better solution today. Doing good work is not always efficient.

The fundamental difference for the artisan model is that it operates in parallel, driven by the workers themselves. Each artisan retains full autonomy of their own specialism, but chooses to supplement their knowledge about how adjacent disciplines relate to theirs. Most importantly, this is done not with the intent to replace the other specialist, but to inform and elevate the quality of one’s own work. This comes with a mutual accountability on doing what is right for the end-user rather than on convenience and expediency. Being an artisan is less about hoarding and regurgitating ‘acquired’ knowledge, and more about being part of a distributed support network of talented individuals. Success is a matter of community. To focus on craft is to stand on the shoulders of those who came before and lift those who come after.

This past year, I had the privilege of visiting the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. This church is still unfinished. It began construction in 1882. Antonio Gaudi, the architect, knew that it would not be completed in his lifetime. He put to place a system to train and empower the people who worked on the project so that the work could go on. Gaudi met an untimely end but the work continues. It is much like the Middle Age cathedrals that took hundreds of years to complete. These works only happened because craftsman were willing to learn from others and then pass that knowledge along to others and on down the line.^[6]

Tools used by various craftsman in the construction of Sagrada Família (Picture from the on-site museum)

I am so grateful for those whose shoulders I stand upon. I think we need to take the opportunity more often to recognize and appreciate those have contributed to our collected knowledge. Ten years ago, Molly E. Holzschlag proclaimed “Unsung Leaders of the Web Day.” She encouraged people to honor a colleague or friend through their contributions.^[7] I think we should make it a regular practice to encourage those who take the time to share their knowledge. People need to hear it. It is has been my experience that they don’t hear it enough. Taking a just a few minutes can make someone’s entire day.

Craft is community.

When reading into these examples and others, I quickly came to see a common thread of respect, intent, ethical standards and community. These human qualities, as I see it, are key to differentiating the craft from the hype-machine – They simply cannot be replaced or replicated by LLMs or design tooling. In her fantastic post, “The promise that wasn’t kept”, Salma writes:

“Real value is delivered through vision, creativity, experimentation, and using human brains to solve human-centred problems.”

This really resonates with me. To dehumanise the craft is to remove the value of the work.

Amen. This really resonates with me. My biggest concern about AI/LLMs is that it is dehumanizing. It seeks to take away the parts of our work that are most enjoyable and just leave us with more of the things we don’t like. Things that don’t feed the soul. It strips work of its value. It strips the workers of their value. I would highly recommend reading Salma’s article. I resonate with a lot of what she says as well.

As an industry we often talk about ‘the supply chain’ in terms of code packages and modules that we depend upon, but I believe there is value in refocusing on the people who support us. Much like the couturiers and culinarians we’ve already talked about, the web industry was built on the skill, care and labour of people and what makes it great is those people. In the face of mass layoffs, it is no longer enough to show up and sweat the details of your own work. It’s the time to champion each other.

There is a difference between being a team member and being a teammate. I learned this from Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel. They believe that being a teammate means a social and emotional connection that goes beyond merely who you report to and work with and a deeper level of commitment to, and connection with, others and the outcomes of the team. I was challenged to embrace this mindset. “When you view your role and relationships with others as more than just transactional, better and more satisfying results can occur.” I found this to be true and the work was more satisfying when I put a high value of building connections with my teammates.

As I read this, I think about a post I read on LinkedIn by Jamie Carracher. I worked with Jamie briefly when he was part of a client team that LGND was working with. This was in response to the Axios article I mentioned earlier.

The impact of AI hits me uniquely in my current role at a startup where I am an in-house team of one. I certainly lean on tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Canva, etc. to help me do more.

But what I’m able to do by myself with these tools certainly doesn’t replace the value of an actual human colleague. Teammates aren’t just their ability to achieve tasks–they are creative, constructive and intuitive. They think ahead beyond the task at hand. They may question whether the task needs to be done at all. They may tell me an idea I have is great–or maybe it stinks! They have their own backgrounds and histories and life experiences that are different than mine. As a manager, I don’t want an army of drones doing my bidding. I want minds that will co-create and share ownership of a common goal. As far as I know, AI can’t do any of that yet. And if it ever can, yikes, that might be when I go looking for an off-the-grid cabin in the woods.

– Jamie Carracher

I would much rather ask another teammate a question than to interact with ChatGPT. Because the interaction is about more than answering my question. It is about building relationship and connection with that person. It is about feeling apart of something bigger than my individual contribution. I believe that we were made for relationships and if we disregard people in the equation of work, we will ultimately fall short of flourishing.

Taking inspiration from the examples above, that might look something like this:

Prioritise working to standards. Standards aren’t a restraint, they’re a peer-reviewed baseline against which you can determine the quality of your work, especially when the people who use your works may depend on them.

Take full ownership of what you control and freely share knowledge with those around you so that they may build upon your work and elevate it.

I have tried to share my knowledge throughout my career either by writing my own stuff or highlighting the works of others through my social media feeds ⁸ or in my weeknotes. I have also spoken at local meetups or conferences in the past to share my experience. I am an introvert and not naturally inclined to put myself up in front of people. But I love to pass along what I have learned and that passion has helped me to overcome my fears and discomfort in order to benefit others.

A couple of years ago, Matthias Ott wrote an article, Better Bridges. Matthias talked about the increasing demands of the front-end developer position. He also brought up an important point; the need to educate our design teams on the recent developments in CSS layout. “How are they going to make the best use of what’s possible and design materially honest solutions when they don’t even know those features exist let alone have an idea how they work?” This sparked the idea in my head to pursue doing an campfire on Modern CSS Development for this very purpose.

At the same time, look elsewhere and allow yourself to be inspired by your contemporaries in adjacent (or even unrelated) disciplines.

Remember that your network is a strength. Give people their dues and allow them credit where their work has lifted your own.

I learned that my network was much stronger than I imagined this past year when I was unemployed and looking for a new opportunity. I was amazed by the support I received from people I hadn’t connected with in years. Jessica Ivins recently posted about two powerful investments you can make in your career. One of those investments is in the people in your network. She shares some very simple ideas that make a powerful impact. I have seen first-hand just how powerful those small acts of kindness and connection can be.

Stand up for adjacent disciplines when you see their knowledge and autonomy being infringed upon and, where work is directly affected in the form of layoffs, form unions and push back against unreasonable demands.

I have not read it but I believe Ethan Marcotte’s book, You Deserve a Tech Union, would be a good resource to think more about this investment. I listened to Ethan share about the book on ShopTalk Show and I know it is a subject he cares deeply about.

More than anything, go out find like-minded people. Where you can, go to meetups or local events and support initiatives such as Piccalilli’s open collective that aim to give back to the community. For those readers in the UK, here are a few fantastic community-led events to get you started:

All Day Hey in Leeds

Frontend North in Sheffield

WDC and Pixel Pioneers in Bristol

State of the Browser in London

FF Conf in Brighton

Yes, find like-minded people. I have reconnected with a lot of like-minded people on Bluesky and Mastodon. I had found that community on Twitter back in the day before it went bad. I attended a regional web conference, Front-End Design Conference in St. Pete, Florida (thanks Dan Denney and Cheri Amor) for many years and enjoyed seeing the same people where the relationships continued on social. I joined a small group of like-minded people yesterday on Zoom for Front End Study Hall. There are plenty of opportunities out there to connect with others. It does take some effort but the rewards are worth it.

~~Hype~~ Hope-driven development.

Despite the questionable stewardship of our industry, the continued resilience of artisans in other fields gives me hope that the devaluation of crafting for the web is not inevitable, rather a matter of framing. Do I believe that any of the ideas presented here will be the miraculous savior of the web industry? Likely not, but then I equally do not believe that there is a single saviour to be found. Whatever the course, I do believe that we need to put in the work together, share our specialisms and then, perhaps, something will happen.

I appreciate that Robb does not think any of the ideas presented in his article are the miraculous savior of the industry. I agree that we need to come together and work together toward a better path or as he puts it in his last paragraph, another fork for those of us who care about quality, craft, user experience, and accessibility. I hope his article sparks more discussion and as more of us think about this and work together, we can find a hopeful path forward.

I’m in little doubt that, as long as there is big money to be made, the exploitative, VC-appeasing hype-cycle will rumble ever onwards. However, much in the same way that artisan-tailors and farm-to-table dining continue to work separately from the exploitative worlds of fast-fashion and fast-food, I have to believe that there can be another place—another market—for those of us who still care about the people and the craft. Not really a hard-reset, but a parallel fork of the industry that does right by its users and by the people working in it. Maybe it’s misplaced idealism or perhaps it’s foolishness, but I can’t shake the hope of that place; some odd kind of hiraeth.

I sure hope that Robb is right. It is a bleak future indeed if he is not. I came away from reading his article with more hope than I have had in awhile. I hope it sparks that same hope in others. And beyond that, it sparks others to join together to fight for a better pathway that does right by its users and the people working hard to make that happen.

¹ Looking Elsewhere by Robb Owen

² I think about Dave Rupert when I think of this term. He would take time on ShopTalk Show to share about some of the latest hot drama in the industry.

³ One of my biggest fears after reading the book AI: 2041 was not the “terminator apocalypse but the disruption that AI would cause as it displaced more and more people from their jobs. One of the chapters dealt with this and predicted that a scenario very similar to the one in the Blood Bath article. I am scared how it could cause our economy collapse. And even more angry at how dehumanizing it is.

⁴ You can find out more about my work on Web Standards Sherpa in the case study I wrote

⁵ The quiet, pervasive devaluation of frontend

⁶ Building cathedrals: the harmony of a collective work across the centuries

⁷ I took it beyond the unsung heroes and recognized a broader segment of people in the industry who made a significant contribution to my career.

⁸ Bluesky, Mastodon, and LinkedIn

Jeff Bridgforth

UX Developer

Looking elsewhere, a reflection

Looking Elsewhere by Robb Owen

Hype-driven development.

Raising the standard.

Fast-software.

The case for blurred specialisms.

But should designers code, though?

Craft is community.

Hype Hope-driven development.

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