[apl002]

you act like whatever something is right now is the same in the future. It's quite possible they see RN as the future for all products and easing there way into things. Maybe they are struggling to find Java/Kotlin devs and have a surplus of Swift devs. So no, that does not really just say it all.

[sandofsky]

> Maybe they are struggling to find Java/Kotlin devs and have a surplus of Swift devs.

Based on AirBnB's experience, now you need to find React Native devs in addition to Java devs.

[raydev]

I can see, if you were a billion dollar company, how you’d have an Android infra team to bridge those performance-intensive items, with the UI team doing all their work in RN.

So you can’t be a startup/small shop if you want to do this well.

[sb8244]

I assume it's easier to find a handful of skilled Android developers rather than staffing an entire engineering org with them.

From my experience with RN, you do need to get into the native bits, but most of the development will be not native. So the number of skilled native device engineers required should be less.

[raydev]

I think you’re touching on something extremely important here. IME, anecdotally, not backed up by data: experienced native Android devs are getting harder and harder to find.

The ones I’ve known personally hated it so much they moved to backend or full stack jobs.

[giovannibonetti]

Interesting, I always thought it would be harder to hire iOS devs since the initial cost is higher - you need to buy a more expensive Apple computer and pay an yearly $99 subscription just to get started.

For that reason I thought that there would be way more Android devs. After all, a teenager with a regular computer can start developing Android apps and download the APK in a cheap Android device without paying anything.

On the other hand you mentioned _experienced_ native Android devs, while my thought applies more to junior Android devs, and maybe the two things don't correlate as well as expected.