Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make some good points that I don't want to detract from -- but isn't setting the bar for finding a dev at 'built and scaled a unicorn level app' a little high? Are there really that many of those
Sorry, I didn't mean built from scratch and scaled it all the way to unicorn. Rather worked on a unicorn scale app in some capacity. Even if you join a late stage startup and didn't build the foundation, the experience you get from how the org runs is pretty valuable. Much easier to find a engineer who engaged with a large Python SaaS app than an Elixir engineer.
Ah I see, thanks for elaborating. Indeed, if you want someone with recent experience in the Elixir/Erlang/OTP ecosystem at massive scale you're probably looking at a much smaller candidate pool than {python/js/etc}