I had problems with prop drilling on early projects but since Context has been around it hasn't been an issue. Never bothered with all these state management libraries, any time someone on my team has tried to sell me on it they've never made a strong case for it over simple proper react state management. useEffect took a little getting used to - it becomes much less problematic when you learn which scenarios to use it in (fewer than you initially think). I've had to use React.memo() at times, but it's usually done in a simple optimization pass not unlike something I'd do in a backend framework.

The only time I am even aware of these problems is when I stick my head into the javascript frontend framework "scene" where everyone acts like each one of these are dealbreakers and they happen constantly all the time.

Life is actually pretty easy as a React dev, it's a well polished and at this point battle tested framework. I wish the other tools in my dev stack were as easy to deal with.