I've read many articles along these lines, and I'm gonna say they all suffer from two logic fallacies: 1. Correlation != causation. 2. Confirmation bias. The

I've read many articles along these lines, and I'm gonna say they all suffer from two logic fallacies: 1. Correlation != causation. 2. Confirmation bias. There was no comparison mentioned in the article (or just about any similarly purposed article). The author has no - or at least did not state any - insight as to whether or not _this_ particular bullet point (Elixir) had any impact what-so-ever on the quality of the candidates that applied. There were no controls or comparisons made. Just a blind assumption that anyone who applied _must_ be better because of the language choice. I have no doubt that the esoteric stack did have one major impact on the recruiting process: they had a far smaller pool of candidates to draw from. They weren't wading in resumes, trying to pick out ones that somehow stood out. And the highly specific details of their stack meant they weren't trying to ascertain whether or not a given candidate with no direct experience would be able to "pick it up". They were able (and had to) pay much more attention to each application. They read each resume carefully. And they were probably less strict about which candidates got that initial phone screen/test. There is a likely a bit of correlation between programmer "quality" and esoteric language knowledge. My experience has been that polyglot programmers are so because they love to program and do so at work an in their spare time. They love learning concepts, ideas, patterns, etc. And they have a lot of tools and (often superficial) knowledge to draw from to solve problems. But, I've also found that often polyglot programmers are terrible at completing. Once the perceived, initial, "fun" problem is "solved" their interest and motivation levels to work through the details, customer feedback, and bugs tanks. All that said, I'm glad they were able to hire Carlos, and I hope he turns out to be the superstar they are looking for!