Let me tell you what's "depressing" about web development:
You finish your part, the web site is done (other team members get their stuff done), you ship to production, it goes live, the client loves it and uses it. Users love it and use it. All is great.
Over a year (or more) updates and additions are done to the site and code. Some mods here, a few CSS tweaks there, a whole new module or some new tool for users or the back end. All is going well.
Then one day, your team isn't needed any longer - either the customer is completely satisfied with the work, and no longer needs or wants any further updates (and what updates they do need, your back-end you developed can handle it for them). You or your employer never hear from them again, or if you call, they just say "we're all good - the site is running great".
Eventually, you note it in your CV and your portfolio and move on.
Then, one day, you turn to look for another position elsewhere (maybe years later and an employer or two in the future), and decide to go back thru your old portfolio, both to catch up on what you did, and what it looks like, and also so you can show a future employer or recruiter what you worked on (at least from a user perspective - because you likely don't have back-end access any longer).
...and it's gone. All gone. The client decided to do a complete system update, using a completely different design firm, etc - and the site looks nothing like what it used to. Your work might as well not exist at all, and you no longer work at the old employer, and you don't have a backup of the code or site (because it was a work for hire or such - legally you can't have a copy). Gone.
As far as anyone is concerned, you have little to no proof you actually worked on anything.
It's a very frustrating thing to see, which is why it is so important to have a portfolio of personal projects and other things to fall back on (and best in a github or other repo).
Still - that only softens the blow somewhat; I know that out there have been a couple of small things I worked on that I would love to be able to show in the future, but which are completely lost (my old employer went out of business not long after I left - then again, we didn't part on the greatest of terms, either).
At one employer (whom I still use as a reference - they were good to me when I worked for them, but let me go in a downsizing prior to the sale of the company) my software is still in use; don't ask me how - it was written in VB6 and used an Access 2003 MDB backend to serve about 50 users on a daily basis; when they let me go they said they were looking into other options, but they never found one - it has had no updates since 2004, yet still runs and works fine, according to my former supervisor (who's now a VP there). I can't do much more than say what it is to a future employer, though, because it was an internal-use only "product" that was never sold outside of the company. It was basically a custom CRM/issue tracker/billing/reporting/file-packaging and distribution solution that grew in an ad-hoc manner - tightly integrated with the company's business rules; when I left, I was working on transitioning the back-end to a PostgreSQL database (via an ODBC connector), reporting used the Actuate reporting suite (the company was a VAR for them), and the file management stuff used Visual Studio as the back-end. On top of that, I built a small scripting language interpreter (today, I would do something different) to handle online updates and installation (for a time we handled updates by going around with a CD to each user, with the new system, we could target updates per user, per update - we could also roll back things - all from within the application). There was also a similar install system for the file updates sent to clients (their main product was written in DB/C - a COBOL variant - and the file updates were packaged based on the repo in VS - turned into a ZIP file that could be installed using a custom installer I wrote that was similar to InstallShield of the time).
Anyhow - I would love to be able to demo it to potential employers, but since it was an internal project, I have nothing to point to in order to even prove I worked on such a system (all I can tell them is to call my former supervisor as a reference - fortunately he still works there, and they still use the software). I was let go in 2004 from that position - so I have one product out there that is still running for 13 years now (fairly amazing to me - I keep expecting a call from them to port it to another platform - but since Windows 10 still supports the VB6 runtime, probably not anytime soon).
This isn't just true for web development thought. If you worked on building some piece of hardware, a few years later you'd be hard pressed to see any of that hardware still around. I guess you can keep one on your shelf as a memento, but it's not like it would work any better as a demo.
I did some hardware design for a product in my first job out of college 10 years ago. They are still shipping it. I'm sure they've updated the boards as parts go EOL (end of life), but they definitely didn't restart from scratch. I would like to get one, but it costs $30k+ [1]
You finish your part, the web site is done (other team members get their stuff done), you ship to production, it goes live, the client loves it and uses it. Users love it and use it. All is great.
Over a year (or more) updates and additions are done to the site and code. Some mods here, a few CSS tweaks there, a whole new module or some new tool for users or the back end. All is going well.
Then one day, your team isn't needed any longer - either the customer is completely satisfied with the work, and no longer needs or wants any further updates (and what updates they do need, your back-end you developed can handle it for them). You or your employer never hear from them again, or if you call, they just say "we're all good - the site is running great".
Eventually, you note it in your CV and your portfolio and move on.
Then, one day, you turn to look for another position elsewhere (maybe years later and an employer or two in the future), and decide to go back thru your old portfolio, both to catch up on what you did, and what it looks like, and also so you can show a future employer or recruiter what you worked on (at least from a user perspective - because you likely don't have back-end access any longer).
...and it's gone. All gone. The client decided to do a complete system update, using a completely different design firm, etc - and the site looks nothing like what it used to. Your work might as well not exist at all, and you no longer work at the old employer, and you don't have a backup of the code or site (because it was a work for hire or such - legally you can't have a copy). Gone.
As far as anyone is concerned, you have little to no proof you actually worked on anything.
It's a very frustrating thing to see, which is why it is so important to have a portfolio of personal projects and other things to fall back on (and best in a github or other repo).
Still - that only softens the blow somewhat; I know that out there have been a couple of small things I worked on that I would love to be able to show in the future, but which are completely lost (my old employer went out of business not long after I left - then again, we didn't part on the greatest of terms, either).
At one employer (whom I still use as a reference - they were good to me when I worked for them, but let me go in a downsizing prior to the sale of the company) my software is still in use; don't ask me how - it was written in VB6 and used an Access 2003 MDB backend to serve about 50 users on a daily basis; when they let me go they said they were looking into other options, but they never found one - it has had no updates since 2004, yet still runs and works fine, according to my former supervisor (who's now a VP there). I can't do much more than say what it is to a future employer, though, because it was an internal-use only "product" that was never sold outside of the company. It was basically a custom CRM/issue tracker/billing/reporting/file-packaging and distribution solution that grew in an ad-hoc manner - tightly integrated with the company's business rules; when I left, I was working on transitioning the back-end to a PostgreSQL database (via an ODBC connector), reporting used the Actuate reporting suite (the company was a VAR for them), and the file management stuff used Visual Studio as the back-end. On top of that, I built a small scripting language interpreter (today, I would do something different) to handle online updates and installation (for a time we handled updates by going around with a CD to each user, with the new system, we could target updates per user, per update - we could also roll back things - all from within the application). There was also a similar install system for the file updates sent to clients (their main product was written in DB/C - a COBOL variant - and the file updates were packaged based on the repo in VS - turned into a ZIP file that could be installed using a custom installer I wrote that was similar to InstallShield of the time).
Anyhow - I would love to be able to demo it to potential employers, but since it was an internal project, I have nothing to point to in order to even prove I worked on such a system (all I can tell them is to call my former supervisor as a reference - fortunately he still works there, and they still use the software). I was let go in 2004 from that position - so I have one product out there that is still running for 13 years now (fairly amazing to me - I keep expecting a call from them to port it to another platform - but since Windows 10 still supports the VB6 runtime, probably not anytime soon).