Social proof does tend to follow employment opportunities. If you're a new dev you don't have the luxury to make principled choices in technology, you're more worried about housing and food security and maybe paying back student loans. Asking new developers to trend-set the industry would be deeply unfair. If we want them to learn from first principles then entry level jobs should have first principles opportunities available.

I meant social proof like prejudice against technologies that employ but don’t seem popular and cool.

Another confusion might be expecting an employer to educate you. That’s part of it but not the requirement.

Self-directed learning is critical to go with any formal learning.

First principles are needing to be taught where or before people are learning things like react. But they don’t, and get pulled into a world of complexity.

Excellent, thank you!