I worked at a well known company running Erlang. Out of maybe 25 people hired to work on software in Erlang, I think two had used it before, and they were hired several years after Erlang became our key enabling technology. I was ahead of many because I remembered seeing the slashdot post when it was open sourced.

If you hire smart and flexible people, and give them a bit of time to learn the syntax, Erlang and I assume Elixir will bend their mind to a new shape, and they'll be fine.

Figuring out what you want the computer to do, and what steps will be needed are much more important than the specific syntax you use.