In my experience, the highest &quot;times 10&quot; productivity comes when developers are motivated and passionate about the work they are doing. (Along with having a baseline of skill of course.)<p>Great developers can be passionate about niche languages and in the short term it could be a recruiting tool for exceptional developers. But you have to balance that against the fact that if your chosen language is too far outside most other developers&#x27; experience you&#x27;re greatly reducing the pool from which you can hire.<p>Let&#x27;s say somehow you are able to find a team of five truly energetic self-managing Clojure developers. Yes, I would back that team if they were up against 25 average developers and associated managers.<p>But then how&#x27;re you gonna scale? You can&#x27;t just take normal developers, teach them Clojure, and expect them to get Clojure fever the same way your group of self-selected experts had. I mean, they are professionals and they will learn it, but you will end up with an ordinary development team simply using a uncommon language.<p>You cannot beat regression-to-the-mean simply by choosing a different development toolchain. You can only beat it by hiring the right people, often those who tend to fall through the cracks of traditional HR processes, and letting <i>them</i> recommend the tools.