Ask HN: Company wants to try out switching from Native dev to React Native dev
Let's say I am a senior Android developer, 8 years experience, good at my craft, know Android and its frameworks inside out. I see myself being a developer for the next 10 years, maybe pivoting to being a tech architect.
Our company (country in western Europe, 30 employees) is going through a though phase, it cannot sell Native App projects. It is easy to sell hybrid projects (react native and flutter). This phase started around a year ago, in that year the sales team successfully sold 2-3 native projects.
Our native dev team is ± 10 people. We have running projects that fill in ±60% of our time. We have some side projects like making a component and flow (login, signup, account management etc.) library that we can reuse in projects. Some of us do design work and backend work.
A few weeks ago management asked us (individually) if we would be interested in learning React Native or Flutter. We all said no.
Last week there was a strategy meeting. Where management announced that they want to try switching from Native development to React Native development. First as a pilot. And if successful continue with it.
Their main selling point that react native projects are more cost efficient. The MVP phase is cheaper for the client and after that phase we can do more work and possible native work.
I really tried to be open minded about it and I understand why management wants this. But I really do not agree with it, I tried react native before and hate it with all the bones in my body.
Also I think it will not be more cost efficient. All the react native projects the company ran before, went over budget, contained more bugs, were harder to maintain, and more escalations with clients.
I also think there are other solutions to get the MVP smaller and cheaper for an initial phase with a client.
What do you guys think about this?
Did you experience something like this?
Should I be more open minded about it?
Should I leave?
If you have an experience like this, please share... also if you have ideas on how to get the MVP phase cheaper..
Thanks for reading!