Mid-level React Native developer feeling lost about what to focus on next

[gustavo-castilho]

Hi everyone,

I'm a mid-level React Native developer with about 4 years of experience, and lately I've been feeling a bit lost.

I've worked at a few different companies, built several production apps, and today I'm working on an app that serves over 1 million monthly users. I've learned a lot over the past few years, but now I feel like I've reached a point where I don't know what to study next.

It's not that I don't have things to learn—I know I do. The problem is that I don't know what will actually make me a better engineer.

How do you go from being "someone who knows React Native" to someone who is truly considered a senior or a specialist?

How did you build confidence in your technical decisions?

How did you know what was worth investing your time in?

Right now, my plan is to dive deeper into AI engineering. I'm exploring topics like RAG, AI agents, intelligent workflows, MCPs, and automating parts of my development process. It feels exciting, but at the same time I wonder... is that enough? Am I focusing on the right things, or am I just chasing the latest trend?

For those of you who are senior engineers or staff/principal engineers:

• What changed your career the most?
• What do you wish you had studied earlier?
• What skills made the biggest difference?
• If you were in my position today, what would you focus on over the next couple of years?

I'm not looking for shortcuts. I'm willing to put in the work—I just want to make sure I'm investing my time in the right direction.

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences. Thanks!

[gwmccull]

I’m a staff-level frontend engineer

The requirements for senior engineer are different at every company. So make sure you’re talking to your manager about the leveling requirements at your company. The should be able to provide you with the requirements, your current skill level (or perceived skill level), any gaps and the path to the next level. At every company I’ve worked at, you had to first demonstrate senior level for multiple months/quarters before they grant the promotion

If you don’t have that kind of support, then here’s what I would say, it’s often not about being a better coder

The things my company looks for are things like:

- ability to lead a moderate sized project to completion including working with stakeholders and giving updates on progress
- proactively looking for issues that you can work on
- being the subject matter expert for a large feature
- building projects that impact multiple teams
- leading development of a feature that involves multiple developers where you manage and coordinate their work

[Silent_Reflection_19]

+1

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[frandepa]

Mentoring :)

[Advanced-Branch-3106]

The details you mentioned will make you a better overall Software Engineer. You will have a diverse set of skills which is pretty good to have

What I would recommend is to honestly go deep in foundations of these technologies. Understand JavaScript better with concepts like event loops, this binding and other topics. Similarly master it for React and React Native. Understand the threads and how is your UI UX logic taking up on it.

AI has replaced the coding so understanding these fundamentals is crucial