Hey actually React has nothing to do with Megacorp at all. We adopted React in 2015 on a small team (less than 10 engineers) as did many other small startups at that time. The decision to use React on a small team is the same as it would be on a large team: It dramatically changes frontend development. It makes this career worth while. I did 5 years before React, and now still using React 7 years after with no competitor in sight.
I don't use React because I'm being forced to. We chose React!
No, the career growth happened in 2015 when we adopted React and stopped endlessly inserting JS and CSS tags from jQuery plugins. Backbone made things worse. Angular made things worse. React objectively changed my life and allowed me to work several remote jobs at once. I watched half a dozen startups adopt React for the better. There is no similar growth or usage to React. React is the king.
Bingo. Smart people understand the domain of interview questions (which we know is contrived) and typically can study enough to implement the solutions. It's not always about getting the question right- it's about demonstrating you are smart, but also these questions are core CS fundementals so it also tests that they have a formal education. Anyone can learn Git, JS, but how many can apply a programming language to a complex problem on the spot?
Software engineers that replace things with functionally equivalent things don't get a lot of actual work done and typically aren't employed for very long either. So, the churn had to stop long ago from inside the average high performing company (and professional engineer's mindset). Only when things are really bad (as they were 6 years ago) is it worth rewriting everything. We've done that and it's not happening again. You can follow my work here: react.school
The prevailing view here is that JavaScript is a nightmare to develop with when in fact, there is actually a bit of a golden age going on right now. It's never been more stable and fun to build apps on the web. Maybe I'll write a post about it.
Yes, functionality would require skills, and skills require opinionated tools. Opinions require taking a stance, and that's the last thing anyone here wants to do.
You didn't need TypeScript. That was your first mistake. If you had chosen Create-react-app (the official boilerplate) - that's all you need. Hello world right out of the box. Nothing blows up in your face. Nothing mind-boggling. I've never had to ever run eject. Nothing saddening, nothing tiring. In fact- just the opposite. Happiness, joy, energizing React productivity.
Yes I totally understand your point of view. I spent almost a decade paying off a six figure debt for my CS degree. The funniest part? I learned almost nothing about web development in school. No marketable skills that would have really helped me when I first started my actual job! How can I argue this is a good thing?
Well, the best analogy I can think of is a black belt in karate. It takes 10 years or whatever to get that. It has no marketable purpose. Why do it? The answer is more than "to get a job". It's about Discipline. Focus. Intense research into fundamentals. Stretching your limit if what you can learn in a weekend. Writing half a page of assembly code on a piece of paper. Debugging a C program. Red black trees. These have no purpose, but when reflecting on these experiences, I would not trade them for a second for "Intro to Javascript and HTML".