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There are three billion Android devices in active use. Writing native applications for a platform with three billion active users is niche, but not that niche. Over 100 billion apps were downloaded on Google Play last year. There probably are more Javascript/React jobs, but there are also more Javascript/React programmers. In mid-2022, many places had trouble finding good senior Android programmers. In the past few months I saw OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity etc. looking for Android programmers. In terms of knowing Java and Kotlin well, there are plenty of Java/Kotlin backend jobs around (don't know about that in hot startups, but outside of Microsoft-world, JVM has been the bedrock of backend for almost 30 years). So that's a logical shift out of an Android job if desired. Also, Android gives analytics to the business that they have more trouble getting on web. On the web companies are at the mercy of Chrome, Safari etc., with Android they're writing their own app to their own specifications (with some Google Play restrictions). Where I work, Android and iOS sometimes are ready to launch before the web team has finished their work. How does that fit into prototyping and shipping fast? It's possible the golden days of launching an app like Instagram and getting acquired a year and a half later for a billion dollars is over, but there is plenty of money to be made. Also, even if a company does launch on web first (most, but not all, companies), if they're successful they often look into launching a mobile app. Even if they start with React Native, KMM or the like they often move to native later (although there are exceptions, I believe Discord launched with RN and it works for them - so different platforms work for different scenarios). |