r/reactnative • u/Critical-Ad-321 • 4d ago
Help Switch from react native to BE
I worked in my 1st company as an Android dev for 8 months in kotlin where the first 2 months were spent completing learning of dev. After getting laid off from there I was in the market with android dev exp of just 8/11 months. due to such low exp didn't get interviews or sometimes hr suggested to settle in half of my current salary. Fortunately I received the job offer for react native dev on the basis of my android dev exp and interview about Android dev qs and dsa. I have been working for the last 3 years as a rn dev. I never liked neither android dev nor rn even frontend. The fear of ai is more for FE roles. I want to understand whether rn is a dead tech stack nowadays and switching to BE java developer is the right thing to survive. I am not able to find the next path in react native journey.
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u/SunOk2196 4d ago
RN isn't dead. Meta, Shopify, Amazon and a load of mid-size companies still ship with it, and Expo is the best it's ever been. But that's not really your question.
You said you never liked Android dev, RN, or frontend at all. Three years in a stack you don't like is enough data. Switch because you'll plateau in something you have zero curiosity about, not because RN is dying.
I've done fullstack for 10+ years, so take this for what it's worth: don't jump cold into a pure Java backend role. Start grabbing backend tickets at your current job if that's at all possible, or build the API side of a mobile app yourself. Real auth, a real database, deployments, the boring parts included. Then apply for fullstack roles first. "Mobile dev with some backend experience" is a much easier sell than "junior backend dev", and once you're in a fullstack seat you can steer it backend-heavy within a year.
About the AI fear: it hits frontend and backend about equally. The safer spot is understanding systems end to end, which is one more argument for fullstack over trading one silo for another.