Hacker News Reader

Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Squarespace was supposed to take away the jobs of people who make websites, but it didn't. The same people who you used to hire to make a website for you are still doing that, but now they just use squarespace for it.

I saw a recent quote for a very basic, static website that was greater than $10k. This would be about a day of work to put together in squarespace.

AI is not going to take away jobs, it's just going to make the people already doing them more efficient.

View on HN

> AI is not going to take away jobs, it's just going to make the people already doing them more efficient

In the same sort of way that wordprocessing just made typists more efficient.

Or if you want to make a more direct comparison, it’s like high level languages and compilers making punch card writers more efficient.

A few points on this from someone who's been building websites for 25 years (I started around when images were added to HTML) -

The web designers don't hear from many of these previous prospects who now go straight to Squarespace.

When people come to me for a Shopify site, it's usually because they've done all but the hardest 10%. Then they want to pay me a tiny amount to do the most unpredictable and difficult 10%. Usually something custom/difficult within the parts of the platform that are locked down.

I've seen budgets from local brand-name companies go from $20k for a build to $2k.

Often, the people charging $10k for a Squarespace site are justifying the majority of that with related services (copywriting, photography, content, marketing, etc). Many surviving web companies needed to become agencies. Shopify has some automated marketing options now. Copywriting is increasingly done with ChatGPT/similar.

Don't get me wrong - this is all very liberating for the client side and a boon for platforms like Squarespace and Shopify, but don't underestimate the upheaval for web designers.

We've been re-inventing the wheel for mom and pops for so long it made sense that someone made it more efficient. I used to do it for small businesses and now I do it on the exact opposite side of the spectrum building web apps and my industry is ripe for the same kind of thing.

In the near-term I think we'll see it as an efficiency gain for developers, but longer term we will be able to just make applications on the fly.

It's hard to predict. Consider bank tellers. ATMs initially allowed banks to run more local branches, resulting in more jobs. But now that ATMs, especially the ones inside, are VERY full function, the job numbers are reducing fast.

https://www.vox.com/2017/5/8/15584268/eric-schmidt-alphabet-...

I don't think its because ATMs are so good/functional as much as it is people just don't use cash and deposite checks like they once did.

> “because of industry consolidation and technological change,”

The job numbers are reducing fast.

Are they? That piece is from 2017, yet we still see bank tellers everywhere.

It seems the increased efficiency of ATMs caused some reduction in the count of teller jobs - but their number has again stabilized.

ATMs meanwhile seem pretty much maxed out with their current feature set.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/te...

Already reduced numbers, and a prediction of a 12% drop over the next 10 years, versus an average 5% gain for other jobs. As mentioned in other replies, not just ATMs, but cashless self-service of all types.

I stand corrected (thank you, btw) as to the continued reduction - but a 1.2 percent annual rate does sound a bit on the slow side.

but it's true that many banks are closing branches in less visited areas, and justifying it (to their local community) with an ATM.

Even that one's a little bit meta, since fewer people are using cash now.

This is an interesting example, because they probably don't use squarespace for it as they are likely more effective with other types of tooling. Whilst squarespace is a great general purpose tool for people who don't know specialized tools, a specialist will be more effective with different tools.

That's where I see the difference in AI as well. A specialist is probably faster using their own tooling rather than muddling through an AI interaction. But the AI gives non specialists the ability to muddle through tasks they can't do on their own, or don't have specialized knowledge for.

Where do you see quotes like this?

Right. But now Squarespace can integrate a prompt that has a conversation with you and build a site and continues to iterate on it until you’re happy. This adds very little cost to Squarespace. Maybe it gets most people to 80%. The last 20% will be a service provided by a human.

Then the last 20% was the only interesting part in the first place.

Until gpt-5 shaves away 17% more, then gpt-6 erases that final 3%.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com