[rux]

As a front end dev, I love it when people I work with use the right tools, and the mindset encouraged by making React things is just... good. The lisp/scheme/clojure wisebeards would approve of how it makes you think about UI.

I feel as though the move from raw JS to JQuery is similar in significance to the move from JQuery to React. So in answer to your question, I would say a dev who learned React would be more appealing as a hire and as a colleague, and it'd be well worth the investment for any future career.

[moonchrome]

I've spent ~2-3 years programming in clojure and prototyped stuff in clojurescript. While I love it for the domains it applies and it has influenced my programming considerably - I would never recommend random 9-5 Java dev shop to go pick up Clojure - there's just no point - Java works fine for what they are doing and their developers know it - learning Clojure would be a huge investment and the benefits wouldn't really be there.

The same thing is true for jQuery -> React. If you're a front end designer who does some programming - you need to learn the DOM and CSS, jQuery is just a simple tool to leverage that more easily.

React is a fundamental change that requires a lot of relearning and more importantly the benefits are questionable unless you're dealing with the scenarios it was designed for. You need to have experience with existing tech (that is way more intuitive, like two way data binding) to see what problems it solves - that's not in the domain of a jquery programmer.

I also wouldn't call people who "just know jQuery" devs but rather designers who know how to code.