NodeJS doesn't have all these gotchas around async that rust does. It's still harder than sync code, but it's more manageable.
The lack of a proper type system, only partially solved by typescript is a big drawback though, that eats into productivity.
Nodejs devs seem to be doing fine? and I would say their development is faster than most devs working on other stacks. Nodejs is also a top 3 server stack and growing.