One thing my job hunt taught me so far is that React is all over the place (surprise!), except at large companies that have in-house front-end teams working on their own sites. Those companies prefer vanilla JS over frameworks. Interesting, isn't it?

Recruiters always ask for React, because their clients do. Still, it seems React is mostly added to the skill list by their clients' "full-stack developers" (i.e. Java people), who don't necessarily know a lot about front-end.

We're currently allowing non-front-enders to take crucial front-end decisions, and their silver bullet is React. (Used to be Angular, will become Vue.) The very fact that they're still looking for silver bullets is maybe the most serious problem we have in front-end right now.

Why do you think it’s non-frontenders who decide for React? I experience the opposite: backenders tend to stick w/ old server-side templates