Maybe the “Webmaster” Isn’t Dead After All

Published on Aug 5, 2026, filed under development, ai. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

At the time [1990s], there was a new breed of web professionals proudly labeled “webmasters.” Part designer, part developer and part evangelist, webmasters held enough esoteric knowledge about the web to manage, edit and create websites, both large and small.

—Jay Hoffmann: The History of the Web, Volume I (2018).

The “webmaster” survived far beyond the 1990s. Even when I joined Google in 2008, I joined the “Webmaster Team,” and we were on Google’s webmaster job ladder.

Yet as the web matured, development splintered into more and more specialized roles—frontend, backend, full-stack, DevOps, UX. By the 2010s, the all-encompassing “webmaster” felt dead, and you and I probably haven’t seen the title used since.

But is it really dead?

I believe that with the advent of AI, we are about to experience a renaissance. AI-augmented developers are operating well beyond the traditional scope of even a full-stack engineer.

Even as our field has grown much more complex, AI is allowing a single person to once again manage the entire stack—from infrastructure to middleware to design and development, testing and optimization.

At first glance, the dynamic might look a little bit like this:

The buff 1990s webmaster vs. the AI-dependent 2020s webmaster.

…which isn’t meant in a demeaning way: To actually do their jobs well, AI-supported webmasters still need a broad foundation of knowledge across different domains to understand why things matter and how they connect. AI enables and leverages, but the webmaster orchestrates and takes the responsibility.

When they do their work well, modern AI webmasters may warrant this instead:

The buff 2020s webmaster vs. the tame 1990s webmaster.

Call it speculation, call it Web romanticism—the power of an AI-augmented generalist who owns their work is valuable, and will be hard to ignore. If one person can successfully wield that much capability, maybe the webmaster isn’t dead after all—maybe they’re leveling up, and the real time for the webmaster is yet to come.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)