Ask HN: My industry's becoming commoditised and I'm scared
For the last 12 years I&#x27;ve worked as a web developer, first solo, then part of a couple of firms, then solo again. I&#x27;ve always prided myself on inquisitiveness and giving businesses what they want, but more and more the budgets - and industry expectation - is to roll out a piece of off-the-shelf software (Wordpress, Drupal, Magento), stick some Bootstrap code on it, apply a layer of design and push it out. I&#x27;m not getting job satisfaction and I don&#x27;t feel I&#x27;m doing good work.<p>I&#x27;ve built large custom business systems (integrated sales&#x2F;crm&#x2F;accounting&#x2F;order management), but the demand for these has dried up as SaaS integrated with other SaaS works out much cheaper.<p>I watched it happen to my uncle (a chartered accountant) - it&#x27;s gone from a well-respected, well-paid profession to being data-entry using low-qualified staff and a few highly-qualified advisors.<p>Designers seem to have it even worse: no need to create, just assemble ready designed components and use off-the-shelf themes). I look at the &#x27;enterprise software&#x27; firms that I&#x27;ve had as clients and their staff have become &#x27;integrators&#x27;, gluing together Oracle&#x2F;Microsoft systems to give the client (something of) what they want.<p>I was aware of jobs becoming commoditised; naively I didn&#x27;t expect it to happen to me. And I&#x27;m scared. I never wanted to be an assembler, to see all the fun stuff automated; I chose my career in the heady early days of the web, when there was so much to figure out.<p>What do you recommend, and are there any industries or services which aren&#x27;t&#x2F;aren&#x27;t yet&#x2F;can&#x27;t be commoditised?