What "18 years in web dev" actually means when your clients are small businesses

<p>I used to think the job was mostly writing code. Seven years in, I still write code 💻, but the moments that stick are rarely the ones where I typed the cleverest abstraction.

<p>Nearly 20 years of design experience, now running a solo AI creative studio from Berlin<br /> The product stack: 6 digital products, 116 merch items, 98 blog articles, all one

<p>The tech job market in 2026 is sending contradictory signals. Nearly 79,000 workers were laid off in Q1 alone, and 20% of companies explicitly cited AI as the reason. At the

<p><em>A 20-year lesson in trust, reputation, and why the medium never mattered.</em></p> <p>Two of my most significant client engagements in the last 20 years came from a