More like: Designers won't have jobs if web sites never need to be changed. So they create work for themselves by inventing the necessity of a redesign.

Designers mostly don't initiate these kinds of things. Some Jony Ive-like rockstar designer is fairly rare.

If you want the source of most redesign initiatives, look at the middle management and executive levels. At the end of the day, if they want a redesign and a designer says "no" they'll just be replaced.

While designers are to blame for a lot of awful things and same for developers, you are absolutely correct.

For most of the companies, it’s somewhere from middle management to the top that someone sees a “cool” website late at night and the next morning says “I think it’s time for a much needed re-design”

Seconded. It's generally management and junior talent who see things in that way.

> Like programmers feel a project need a an overhaul, even though the end user thinks everything is okay.

A decent design doesn't need an overhaul to extend the functionality of a program or even to keep the program being able to run on modern operating systems, whereas the code foundation absolutely needs regular maintenance - external dependencies need to be upgraded, platforms change their APIs all the time (cough Windows), and after a number of extensions it might make sense to refactor code.

The problem is as usual career/KPI related - there is no glory in maintenance or prevention. A new design will be seen, reviewed and advertised, which if done well is good for the careers of the people involved. With the backend code, unless the developers have extremely good managers and corporate culture allows valuing of maintenance, no one cares even about a complete rewrite - maybe only when it saves actual money e.g. in hosting because money is the only thing MBAs can understand.

However the article claims the users require change. Designers are not users, although oh so often they (and developers or...) claim to represent user wishes. And often as you said users are unhappy with the redesign but who's closer to the decision makers?

Existing users are unhappy, because they have habits. New users might consider a competitor with a "fresher" design.

I see this with buttons that have shadows/not flat. It makes me think that site is old.