As a React developer who can also sling Rails + ERB, they're very different skillsets, even though they're both broadly "frontend". I can see why someone who's

As a React developer who can also sling Rails + ERB, they're very different skillsets, even though they're both broadly "frontend". I can see why someone who's trying to make a career as a React developer would see a primiarily-ERB role as a detour. And maybe in their next round of interviews, people would question how good they are at React if they spent the last X years doing mainly ERB/HTML with only sprinkles of React. "I see you don't have a lot of recent React experience..." And yeah, I agree - a person can get rusty with some tools and pick them up again just fine. The trouble isn't whether you (the interviewee) believes that, it's more about convincing the person on the other side of the table. The perception in JS-land is that things change Very Fast™ and that skills quickly go obsolete. (Disregarding that if you zoom out, React hasn't changed majorly in 4 years and it's been the dominant choice for 6+ – the perception of fast-paced change is definitely a thing)