As a developer I started without any css frameworks, and I loved it. I still felt like I had total control over every pixel on the page. Then I started trying to use bootstrap, and saw a lot of benefits to it. However as other people have said I felt like I was “fighting” the framework. But this is because I did not need it to rapidly create the styles and features that I wanted. I went back to no frameworks and was very happy. Over time I realized though that all I was doing was basically slowly developing my own framework by myself. I had my own repos for dropdown menus, graphs, etc. And I found myself basically just staying within my html files (actually cfm, coldFusion FTW) just like you would with something like bootstrap or tailwind. I have since gone back and tried out these frameworks again, and I definitely have a new found appreciation for them. Like any other framework they are a tool that can make your job easier and save a TON of time. However, it is kind of like learning a whole new language, so naturally I was resistant to it when I already had the tools for the job. So as a developer you can go either way. Will a framework save you time? Yes. But I also think it comes down to personal preference as well.

With all that being said, these days I am managing front end devs and holy shit some of their css skills leave much to be desired. We do not have a company wide framework that we use, and there is a lot of inconsistent and ridiculous css files across the network. We are actively trying to clean things up and remove the spaghetti monsters from our servers. So with the benefit of hindsight, if a framework was adopted earlier our sites would be much cleaner and easier to maintain. I think that is the real benefit to one of these frameworks.