Some smaller companies have found that choosing “weird” languages gives them a much more focused pool of candidates from which to choose. Advertise for a Java position and you’re going to be overwhelmed with résumés.
And you’re doing a grave disservice to Elixir at the least. I prefer Erlang myself, but Elixir has established itself as a robust choice.
Yeah, I definitely don't care what backend language experience someone has before hiring them.
I haven't had the same luck with frontend. There's so much magic, config file hell, and other rough edges that you need someone who knows the framework. In the JS world, actually writing code is maybe 50% of the work, and managing the ecosystem (config, build, packages, etc.) is the rest.
And you’re doing a grave disservice to Elixir at the least. I prefer Erlang myself, but Elixir has established itself as a robust choice.