What in particular about JSX makes it messy compared to vue? Messy template code can happen in both.
Vue templates support conditional rendering (v-if/v-show/v-else) which I didn't realize I missed until using them. Also, conventions around component data are really nice and help keep markup tidy and very readable.
I like to think of Vue as React with sensible conventions. That said, both are terrific and solve UI problems very elegantly.
React handles conditional rendering better imo. You use regular JS instead of having to learn a new API. You can use control logic in your render methods to great effect.
I definitely agree that React is clean for the reasons you state and I always enjoy building UIs with it. I suppose my comment was just a reflection on the differences that I found refreshing - to my surprise.
So it's your engineer's fault. Plenty of companies get stuff done with React everyday.