Kyle Nazario

I want to state this once, for the record, for easy reference.

Recruiters: if someone has experience in a frontend framework like Angular, Vue, React or Svelte, they have experience in all of them.

Here are three reasons why.

Reason #1: Frontend frameworks are the same

This may not be clear if you have not done a lot of frontend coding, but having worked in several, it is true. Frontend frameworks are fundamentally similar. They are all:

• Written in the same language (JavaScript ¹)
• Running in the same environment (a web browser)
• Styled in the same way (CSS)
• Designed the same way (components)
• Solving the same problem (show something in this web browser)
• Compiled with similar tools (webpack / Vite / etc)
• Built with the same third-party libraries (from NPM)

They even solve that problem the same way, by breaking up the website you see into small, reusable components. Those components display data, accept user input or both. The things that make a good React component are simplicity, low coupling, having a single responsibility, and reusability. This is also true of Angular, Svelte and Vue.

I’m not saying there aren’t differences between the frameworks. There are. They’re just usually trivial. Which leads me to my second point.

Reason #2: It is extremely easy to train someone on a new framework

I can personally attest to this. When one of my coworkers went on paternity leave and one left, we transferred two React developers onto our Angular app. It took them two days to get up to speed. Two days!

Reason #3: Other recruiters agree with me

It’s not just me claiming experience in any frontend framework applies to every frontend framework. Read job postings!

Here are preferred qualifications I just pulled from eight different Denver-area frontend job postings:

React or similar libraries (Vue, Angular)

Experience as a software engineer with user interface development in Angular, React, Svelte, or similar framework

Software development experience working with dynamic languages such as Javascript (Node.js), Java, Python or Ruby and web frameworks such as React, Vue, or Angular.

Experience leveraging front-end frameworks like React, Angular etc.

3+ years of experience working with and using libraries, tools, and frameworks such as: Nodejs, Angular / React

JavaScript (React, VUE and Angular)

JavaScript (jQuery plus Node, Angular, or React)

Demonstrate an advanced-level knowledge of JavaScript frameworks like Angular and React and CSS pre-processing frameworks like Sass.

If you are a recruiter or hiring manager, understand a ton of your colleagues and competitors already understand experience in one frontend framework applies to every frontend framework. They will find more and better talent than you.

Exception: If your team is going deep on one framework

Now, if a team is heavily invested in a niche or uncommon feature of a framework, then it makes sense to recruit from people with experience in that framework.

For example, although Angular is highly similar to React and Vue, some Angular teams use RxJS heavily. RxJS is genuinely hard and weird and not used as often in the other frameworks. Reactive programming is its own field that candidates may not have encountered in other frameworks.

If the hiring manager tells you candidates have to have Angular experience because the last three candidates had no idea what an Observable is, that’s reasonable.

Recruiters: stop making life hard for yourself

Look, I get it. Most people hiring aren’t trying to be brave. You don’t want to go out on a limb arguing to your boss that someone with three years’ experience in React can learn Vue, or vice versa.

But I promise you, as long as that person seems even a little bit good at software engineering, they can.