I currently use Ubuntu on one of my laptops precisely because it's not GNOME. I can't stand GNOME3's hamburger menu UIs, giant title bars, lack of real menus, inability to make changes without digging into their version of dreaded "registry" and that pointless menu bar at the top. If I'm being forced to move to GNOME, I'll be switching to Fedora instead since they have a solid track record of GNOME and Wayland support.
My desktop will always be Arch, however with Cinnamon and, occasionally, i3 for development.
Even if Canonical only keeps a fraction of its desktop staff, they could easily improve on GNOME's default settings and theme, something that Fedora won't do.
It should be much easier since GTK+ "4" (not too many changes in GTK+3.x) combined with finally having a theme API, though the intention is to have some bits of GNOME run these development GTK+ versions at some point in future.
They're redoing how widgets work in GTK+ "4". That's basically like changing HTML and having slightly different elements. Though there's a theme API, I wouldn't be surprised if some theme work is needed as a result.
My desktop will always be Arch, however with Cinnamon and, occasionally, i3 for development.