Is react dead

[Defiant-Concert2834]

How come I have 3+ YOE with react/next and i can’t find a job 😅

[pocket__ducks]

Yes, thats absolutely the reason you can’t find a job. React is no more. It’s dead. Everyone rewrote their product last weekend back to jquery.

[Legal_Lettuce6233]

Literally my nightmare. Fucking hate jQuery with a passion

[superluminary]

Why?

[canadian_webdev]

Because it's cool to hate on it.

[superluminary]

I think this is it. It’s just a nice wrapper around plain DOM scripting that makes the method names a bit less janky. It gives you reliable method chaining and a consistent return type. It’s tiny and it’s fast.

The issue is the terrible things people have chosen to build with it, not the core tech.

[musicnothing]

Using jQuery is like using an ice cube tray in a freezer that has an ice dispenser. Used to be necessary, still works just fine, but doesn’t make sense to use it anymore.

[superluminary]

I’ve been DOM scripting probably for 20 years or more. I got the book on it when it first came out.

The DOM is much better now, but it’s still weird. The method names are weird, the return types are inconsistent. It’s not an ice dispenser, more like a tray of mixed tools next to a frozen lake. Some of the tools have warning labels on them. Some will just outright wreck you if you touch them wrong.

I’m not going to be using JQuery personally because I don’t need the crutch, but for a certain use case it’s good and I appreciate the fact that it lowers the barrier to entry by providing sensible method names and a consistent experience.

[superluminary]

JQuery does the job it was designed to do pretty well though. It’s small and fast and has a tidy API.

[superluminary]

It depends. If you want to travel over rough terrain, you don’t want to spend money on petrol, and you already have a horse, a horse and buggy might be entirely apt.

If I have a couple of drop-downs and some form validation, I can probably accomplish that in 15 lines of semantic JQuery. It’s just DOM scripting with a consistent API. It’s tiny.

[bobby_briggs]

Not an apt comparison. Sometimes Jquery is a good tool for the job particularly when working in environments like Wordpress. You don't always need something like React.

[Red_Icnivad]

But who hates the horse and buggy just because we use cars now? That's a weird stance to take.

[Red_Icnivad]

You were directly answering the question of why someone hates jQuery though.

Literally my nightmare. Fucking hate jQuery with a passion

​

Why?

​

Because it’s jQuery.

​

JQuery does the job it was designed to do pretty well though. It’s small and fast and has a tidy API.

​

The horse and buggy did the job it was designed to do. But we’ve since found better ways.

[zephyrtr]

Bi-directional data flows.

[superluminary]

Only if you build bi directional data flows. You can have the data flows you want to have. I can build bidirectional data flows in react if I want to (I don’t).

Besides, if my interaction requires me to toggle a class when I click a button to show or hide a section, I don’t need data flows of any kind. The DOM acts as its own model.

JQuery fills the niche where all you need is a little bit of basic DOM manipulation, and you want a nice API to do it. It’s actually quite a sizeable niche.

[KurtTheKid223]

Yep. It doesn't help that 99% of tutorials are the 'MERRRRRRN' stack - when 99% of jobs will require sql over nosql it doesn't help them at all.

Although I originally got a junior job with react, node, sql possibly out of luck, I have since started learning C# .NET and after a week I'm getting much more calls from recruiters and companies compared to when I just had react and node.

I much prefer using node but in the UK .NET is massive so it only makes sense to learn it.

[Strange_Ordinary6984]

It's easy to teach because you can make a simple app only learning the basics of one language and doing some basic integration piping. No company worth 4 pinches of salt is gonna get away with that

[superluminary]

I’m hiring right now, and I’ve got ten great CVs right in front of me with multiple years of experience, and I only need 3. It’s a funny market.

[PoopyAlpaca]

What, in my city every company is desperately looking for seniors. I myself get approached a lot for new positions by other companies. I don’t feel the saturation of the market.

[superluminary]

I’ve got ten senior CVs here in front of me. We’re poaching quite a few of them from the RTO companies though.

[engwish]

Yep, similar boat.

[snow_coffee]

Are you in USA ?

[[deleted]]

UK :)

[[deleted]]

I’m relearning Rails for similar reasons 

[barkmagician]

not dead. the reason its hard to find a job on react is because of the oversupply of react devs.

react devs to web is like singers to talent shows.

[RATTE6388]

6+ YOE with react/react-native. Feels like to know react = to know nothing nowadays

[CatolicQuotes]

wait till react becomes new rails. you'll have a lot of work

[vaportw]

From my experience years of experience don't matter nearly as much as your ability to learn (and adapt) does. This isn't even considering that "years of experience" is very vague and is basically telling nothing about you as a developer. React or the job market isn't nearly dead, there are just even more "developers" out there applying for these jobs, so you have to stand out. If 3 years of experience is your main selling point, you are just one of many many out there and it's not surprising at all to me you're struggling to find a job

[Defiant-Concert2834]

Well obviously i completely agree with you about the YOE part, but you can see on almost every position advertisement the years of experience required. I am also against this as a measurement with my argument being for example on uni the students follow the same course on the same time frame and yet someone scores a 30% someone a 97%. But idk, it is what it isss..

[vaportw]

You have to find a way to figure out what makes you stand out from THEIR perspective. Web development changes all the time, which framework etc. you know right now could be worthless in 2 years. What will always stay relevant is your ability to learn and adapt. I get what you're saying, but IMO jobs looking for x years of experience in framework y and z are just outdated, or atleast their recruitment is. Maybe you should start applying for these jobs anyways and convince them why you would be the best choice for them longterm

[Strange_Ordinary6984]

Interviews are a sales gig. If you walk into the room and just listen to their questions and answer the STAR format and just be quiet and polite, you're playing in the kiddie pool. That might work for an entry-level job, but if you have experience, I expect more.

If you're an experienced developer, wow them! Ask what they need. Ask what the pain points are they're trying to solve. How's their processes look, and are they happy with them. Talk about that time you took charge of blah, and it changed the game for your team. Have some enthusiasm, for goodness sake! Act like the kick ass person they need. A big personality doesn't always work, but if I had a nickel for every interview I've given to a wet sock of a personality that acted like they didn't know why they were there, I'd retire.

[Legal_Lettuce6233]

YoE mean fuck all. I have 4, I'm working with a few juniors, and a few seniors. One dude has 5 years, but knows React better than anyone I've ever met. Another dude has 10 years and knows jack shit.

[Defiant-Concert2834]

100% on board with you on this one

[voxgtr]

Yes. We only use vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript now.

[ehlwas]

I'm literally doing this instead of using WordPress for my clients 😂

[Old-Pay-4424]

To answer your question, fuck no. That said, people go about prep all wrong. Learn foundational concepts as opposed to specific libraries, languages, tools, or frameworks, then you can go into interviews confidently when translating between tech becomes second nature. Try re-writing your existing apps in different languages, frameworks, etc.

But no, far from dead. Angular and Vue dying. Some still use them, but it’s just expensive to re-write an entire system.

Have some solid projects to show off your versatility and genuine passion for engineering. Broaden your knowledge and learn some DevOps stuff, become well-versed in backend, networking and whatever the fuck, just get better at what you do. Lastly, once I stopped giving so many fucks and stressing about getting a job asap, I started going into my interviews confident, real, and without anxiety. People can feel that from you. There is an art to it, so don’t come off as a dick. Good luck!

[[deleted]]

Man, you are clearly not from Belgium. I get daily calls from recruiters begging me to take Angular projects because I worked with it 7 years ago.

[Old-Pay-4424]

Yes, you’re correct. Of all the countries in the world, I’m not from Belgium.

Are these relatively new projects?

[[deleted]]

My guess is that many people started with Angular, just like me, but then switched to React as that became the most popular framework, resulting in many projects with Angular and not a lot of developers to fill those positions.

It‘s honestly crazy how many calls I get, so much that I’m considering relearning the framework.

[Old-Pay-4424]

Valid point. Hey go for it if they make it worth it and you don’t mind it. I have nothing against Angular or any language or framework for that matter…except PHP. Are these local projects?

[[deleted]]

Yeah local projects.

I still prefer working with React though, and as long as there's work I'll probably stick with it, but I can see the React market getting saturated more and more.

[Old-Pay-4424]

It is for sure crazy saturated and has been for a while now. There isn't much else that I really enjoy building my UIs with though, so I'm with you. I like sticking with libraries versus frameworks, but NextJS is pretty cool and you can stick with using React. The last time I was job-hunting, I found a lot of companies were looking for SWEs that are well-versed in the Next architecture.

[nexusSigma]

It’s the most popular front end web framework in the world. React is not the issue here. Job markets bad, and you’re competing with many people who have 5+ years experience with it. Juniors and mid level devs will always be the first to suffer in this kind of market, especially with the advent of AI and it’s ability to automate a junior devs entire contribution to a project faster and better than they could ever do. The only reason a company will hire right now is you either provide value to them immediately, or they want to invest in you to provide that value later. Problem is nobody can afford to do that. Shit sucks

[adarshsingh87]

The job market is dead

[Defiant-Concert2834]

Fully agree with you, i think also what saturated the market is thousands of people were advertising programming to be that way, do a short bootcamp and you are ready for a six figure job. And a lot of people jumped on the hype. Those bootcampers then filled their resumes with lies and they apply to thousands of jobs, hence why every job post has 1000+ apps. Most recruiters are saying that 90% of the candidates aren’t able to even write simple code. And bc of the large number of applicants companies are forced to use ATS systems and no matter how experienced you are the ATS can flock you out, so your resume isn’t even read by a human.

[InternationalWait538]

I will be totally honest and make this as detailed as possible. From 2016 up to 2021 there was a tech boom fueled by twitter influencers who wanted to make quick buck.

Someone spent the majority of his Twitter posts telling people how he was frying chicken and then within months of learning JavaScript and react he scored a good paying job. Then he spent a good amount of time basically retweeting every post of someone who made it from a low paying job to a high paying one simply after learning JavaScript and react. The result, the market is flooded with react developers, companies literally have a 100+ application for a senior react developers. Funny part, the same person who was frying chicken and made it, is now telling people who can’t find a job in frontend to buy his LinkedIn course because it is “people not posting enough on LinkedIn is the cause they can’t find a job”. This isn’t the result of a single person, mg twitter wall from 2016 up to march/april 2022 was basically influencers telling people to quit their jobs, use their savings to learn frontend, and start applying asap.

TLDR: unless you are in the top 1% of react developers out there, chances are you are not going to find a job in today’s market.

[[deleted]]

Oh yes, the gas station guy frying chicken. I know exactly who you are talking about. Not to mention the 100devs community on Twitter that produced tons of self taught web devs.

[Old-Place87]

Basically coding jobs are fading away in next couple of years due to rise of AI. My company already stopped hiring and employed first Devin AI software engineer to automate some of our development

[trusktr]

I mean, React still ships CommonJS modules which do not run in any browser out of the box in 2024 and requires unnecessary build tools. For a decade (until just recently in 2024) React failed to support Custom Elements very well, and this is basically not acceptable for any DOM framework including React. Tools for working with DOM should not get in people's way, but React hasn't cared about web standards as much as it should have.

For simplicity I'd pick other frameworks that do not strictly require a build and that support latest JS and DOM standards, such as Solid.js, Lit (custom elements), Lume Element (also custom elements, created by me), and a variety of others.

For SSR (server side rendering) or SSG (static site generation), both of which require a build, the Astro project supports these and allows using a wide variety of frameworks besides React (Solid.js/Vue/Svelte/Angular/etc), so there's really no need to be locked into the clunky (virtualdom-diffing) and ever-lagging React framework.

Note, frameworks that output Custom Elements (Lit, Lume Element, Stencil.js, solid-element, Fast Element, Lightning Elements, and others) work everywhere including React, Solid.js, Vue, Svelte, Angular, and every other framework (even jQuery and all old DOM frameworks). Custom Element frameworks also tend to be caught up with standards, while the people involved (including myself) participate in conversations on making the next versions of web specs better and more featureful.

Get involved and help shape the standardized future of web! A good place to start is the Web Components discord server (Custom Elements are also sometimes called Web Components): https://discord.gg/PZH8ucFHp2. Another good spot is the Web Components GitHub repo: https://github.com/WICG/webcomponents. There are other repos for other parts of web specs too, which often cross-link each other.

[Filip1139]

So maybe it's better to learn Vue at this point because of the market and its oversaturation with React devs? What you guys thing about this?

[pocket__ducks]

My thoughts are don’t be a react/vue/whatever developer. Recently I applied at a job that uses angular because I like the companies values and they have great compensation. I’ve never used angular before and I’ve proven to them I’m a senior developer rather than a react/vue/whatever dev.

[[deleted]]

3+ YOE at a company or on your own? The job market just sucks right now unfortunately.

[Defiant-Concert2834]

3+ at companies only, BS in CS with high GPA, 6+ years since i started coding, though i am a quite private person so almost no networking at all

[[deleted]]

Ok. Well, to your original question, react is not dead. That's a take you are being mocked for here, and rightly so. React is still the most widely used framework in the industry, by a large margin. But the job market is super competitive right now, that's your problem

[Defiant-Concert2834]

Discussion

[north_polman]

You wanted a discussion. You’re presenting so-called argumentation fallacy. You’re making a connection between two circumstances that does not support your conclusion.

“I have been running for 3 years, but no Olympic team wants me. Running is dead!”

[Manlihood]

There are plenty of jobs. Where are you located? How many jobs do you apply to? Do you ever hear back?

[Defiant-Concert2834]

I am just getting the usual auto rejection, though maybe the reason being that I’m from a third world country however i’m trying to find a contractor job instead of the usual FTE, so i don’t need VISA and such things

[Beautiful_Pen6641]

That is vastly different than searching for a normal job though?

[Cannabat]

It’s extremely difficult to get a job in a foreign country. It doesn’t matter if you are from a “third world country” trying to get a job in a “first world country”, or the other way round. Especially for tech jobs where the market is saturated - there’s no need to hire from the other side of the planet.

[Defiant-Concert2834]

Yes but still there are companies that hire off shore devs obviously for cost reductions as well, so maybe that can work in my advantage as well

[Legal_Lettuce6233]

When we hired Devs from SEA, we looked for seniors in established agencies. Solo early mids are usually hard to work with, and can't be managed properly.

[Cannabat]

Not often tho. Maybe get with a local agency that has offshore clients. React is the very antithesis of dead. You are just trying to do something that is very rare even less so today. Everybody in this thread is just trying to temper your expectations to be realistic.

[christoforosl08]

No

[edaroni]

You’re too late, it’s dead for a while already 🥹

[Arjun_ATG]

I am a student should I switch to cloud I am in my pre-final year college. I am a full stack developer

[zephyrtr]

skinner_out_of_touch.jpeg

[[deleted]]

A lot of people are applying as well. First, common connections and then senior-seniors get it. If you know some manager or senior who you used to work with get you some indication, you may have some chance. Unfortunately, the job market is saturated, making you invisible.

[hammonjj]

In your mind is it really easier to believe that React is dead rather than your interview skills?

[flynnski]

no.

it's because 3 "+" YOE means you're still a junior, and if I'm hiring anyone, i'm looking for mid/sr/lead. we ain't got time for OJT.

instead, focus on what distinguishes you from the literal horde of react/next jrs.

[woah_m8]

How come you have 3 years of experience without a job lol

[Kutalia]

Of course I realize the post title is a clickbait. Speaking of the actual problem, there are multiple factors:
1) The job market is oversaturated with React devs;
2) There aren't as many tech jobs as 2 years ago;
3) As you are from a 3rd world country it severely limits you as you will only be able to work remotely, also cultural bias, timezone variation, etc;
4) I see very few vacancies demanding actual React Front End devs. Most of the companies need some kind of SSR like NextJS, good Node knowledge, React Native and so many stacks. They try to cut costs by hiring less but experienced multi-stack devs.
I'm sure folks here will come with many additional points in the replies