there is not a lot Wordpress topics as far as I see here. I am interested in changing my career to become WP dev. A modern WP dev, with all of side knowledge like deployment, SEO, woocommerce, design, and of course business side. Plugin development also.
I was a wordpress user 10 years ago, and know some design and basic skills. My questions are:
*Is there a future for newbies in wordpress development (like me), and what are the future prospects?
Is wordpress going out of fashion and AI is going to kill it, or some other tech?
Is there demand for WP devs? What is supply-demand of wp devs?
Please some person with in-depth WP world knowledge, thx. My future is on the line.
That’s an interesting question, especially with AI making such an impact in the tech industry.
I work for a company that is focused on WordPress.
As of March 2025, WordPress powers around 61.6% of websites using a known content management system (CMS) and approximately 43.5% of all websites globally. This is a notable increase from previous years—back in 2017, WordPress powered just 27.3% of websites.
WordPress is likely to remain a dominant platform for the foreseeable future, and the demand for WordPress developers will continue, with AI not posing an immediate threat to that demand.
Many major companies rely on WordPress, and there’s no indication that it’s going out of fashion. In fact, WordPress’s dominance in the CMS market has been consistently growing.
There’s still strong demand for good developers — people who understand the stack, know what the business needs, and can actually build solid solutions.
AI is definitely changing how we code, but it’s not replacing devs — it’s evolving the workflow.
If you understand OOP, can work with Gutenberg, ACF, WooCommerce, and are comfortable building headless setups using REST API, GraphQL, etc., you’re already well ahead of the curve.
If you’re worried about getting into WordPress development and think there’s no long-term future — or that AI might make it obsolete — you shouldn’t be.
There’s no greater risk of AI taking over WordPress development than any other area of dev. The general consensus right now is that AI will augment developers, not replace them. And that applies just as much to WordPress as to any other stack.
As for the future of WordPress — even if a shift happens and a large portion of the web moves to something else — you won’t be alone. There’ll be a whole ecosystem shifting with you. And the experience you gain now — working with real clients, building production sites, solving business problems — that will carry over to whatever comes next.
Look, right now AI is a tool for developers. If one guy could have 5 sites a day, now he can make 15. For a freelancer this is gold but if you are employed chances the company is gonna pivot towards AI and kill job and if you are not special you are done.
In the future its anybody guess but based on what i have researched soon there will be a time where the need for human input will be gone and web dev will be the first thing to go. Enterprise software/ legacy code jobs will be safe for a while longer then they will go too.
That’s that whole thing. If you start now, unless you are a super genius that can out pace AI, you’ll always be playing catch up to it. web dev is dying and will be dead soon. Only like the top 1% that can write literal magic will be in super high demand, rest will be done by AI
alternatively you can really double down, who knows in the next 5 yrs if everyone has given up you will be in a position to capitalize the fuck of the situation. Super risky but super lucrative
You are a company with 10 employees. Let’s say for sake of argument using AI allows one of your developers to code 10x more and make 10x more websites.
Would you fire 9 of your programmers? Or would you want all 10 of your programmers to be writing 100x more code using AI and make more/better websites faster and get more/bigger clients?
if the company has a demand for 100 websites but currently can only make like 20, then yes with AI they will retain and fulfill the demand. IF there is a demand to begin with
secondly, look devs are not in charge, suits are. If a suit sees a short term profit by firing 9 of 10 guys to cut expense and make the quarter look real good, and get a promotion, do you think he will pass it up? Or will he play the long game and retain what is essentially a surplus so that someday there will be a demand and hell meet it.
for now jeremy. That the whole thing. who knows what the future will look like but if we jsut extrapolate the present, for coding in general its fucking grim.
Grind for years to gitgud and fucking Devin takes you job.
Lets ease up on the hard swearing please. We have users under the age of 18.
Since the future is uncertain, as you say, I think you’re likely best off not saying that the doom scenarios you’re proposing are certain to happen.
Both of these scenarios have some validity, but I’m saying there is a flipside to your scenario.
Widespread increases in productivity generally increase overall GDP. Demand can also increase. Entrepreneurs might be starting 10x more projects and companies by leveraging AI and therefore require 10x more websites. It’s just a very simple extrapolation.
Just as you say only super-coders would be in demand and charge high fees. On the flipside, perhaps junior devs will be 10x more productive and be more in demand than they are today.
Neither of these scenarios are likely to be 100% accurate, but you’re only considering one scenario. You are trying to predict the future but only looking at one path with very little critical thinking.
You are discounting the human factor; greed. and the most important driver of global commerce; cost.
I’m already seeing AI-generated ads from my local brands. My local brands! They are using AI-generated imagery. How do I know? Because it looks like AI. Do the execs care that the image looks AI-generated and a bit fake, or do they care that it took like three prompts, 10 bucks, and 5 minutes versus hiring or using the in-house editor that would charge upwards of 500 bucks with a TAT of a week? Please wake up
I checked reddit and other platforms aswell before coming to the conclusion. First there were posts where writers lost their jobs, then graphic designers. Every major company inserting AI into their business.
As for webdev, Claude Free can make me a site in about 5 minutes. Sure, it will need a lot of tweaking, but the goal of every AI company is to make a normal guy use natural language to do something a programer would. And in 5 years, given the hype, that is very real. They will most likely. And I’m still talking about the free version. Paid is a whole different ball game
I’m simply going by the prepare for the worst mindset. And it’s not a 50/50 outcome. more like 80/20
I don’t think anyone is discounting greed. We’re saying that you’re spinning a certain doom and gloom scenario while telling others that the future is unknowable. Instead of just accepting that AI will take every job and we’ll be jobless and dead, I recommend folks make the most of emerging and changing opportunities.
You’re entitled to your opinion, Becca. It sounds like you’ve done your research and some people do have the same opinion. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
We need to be prepared for the worst case scenario. That’s all i’m doing. A lot of newcommers have the same doubts like the OP and I was on the platform with the same issue. I have shared what i learned
There is also another possibilyt, where everyone either gives up completely and goes in a different direction and we are left with vibe coders and no actual coding skill. Maybe and its a big maybe, in 5 years there are so few actual coders that the market bounces back provided AI hasn’t completely overtaken everything. It is a possibilty but i would not bet on it
Sure, you can try to prepare for a worst case scenario. That doesn’t mean you need to treat it as 100% certain and dismiss any reasons why the worst case scenarios may not actually be realistic.
