Working as a professional programmer is quite a bit different than university and side projects. I would say find a job using a language you are most comfortable with. Ideally you can find a job where they are using some best practices, Continuous Integration, Agile, etc. Get comfortable with the processes.

Some good questions to ask while interviewing.

How is the software deployed?

How long does it usually take for a PR to make it to production? anything over a few days is a warning sign.

What is the planning like for new features, how are new features decided on?

How many people will be on your team? Is there a project manager? a product manager?

Who will you report to? An engineering manager? CTO? one of the managers above?

What’s the longest tenure on your team?

What is the on-call schedule like?

How do you document your code?

Once you are comfortable, start pushing Elixir Maybe a new application will come along that is a good fit for Elixir.

It’s also much easier to find jobs once you have some professional experience.

Move. When you are young, there is a lot of experience waiting for those who do not stay at home.

Hey.
Good for you that you jumped the shark to learn FP! As I guy who was 14 years neck-deep into imperative / procedural / OOP languages (C, C++, Java, PHP, Ruby, Go) I can tell you that learning FP is very, very worth it. It will make you a better programmer.

As for job, do not despair! Here are some links for you:

• Job ads on this very forum.
• HackerNews’ jobs section.
• HackerNews’ monthly “Who’s hiring” mega-threads. Please note: this search also includes “Who wants to be hired” / “Freelancers” as well. But it’s really easy to filter for “Who’s hiring” by eyeballing.

There are other outlets but I found ElixirForum and HackerNews the most efficient channels to find employers looking for Elixir programmers.

enton has some good advice but I would add a bit more.

This is language agnostic advice but my suggestion isn’t too look for a job doing Elixir per se. Dig into finding a good company where you can learn a lot. Picking a company purely for the technologies doesn’t always turn out well. It’s a factor but more important is finding somewhere that has a good work culture.

Look for a team who is smart, solving problems you are interested in (regardless of language) and has a good culture. This means encouraging learning and growth has a mentorship porgram and/or friendly people that will help you learn software well.

The team is more important than language. If you join a good team you will be setting yourself up for future success. A lot of solid programming techniques, practices and challenges are language agnostic. Learn a ton and when you feel comfortable and see a niche that Elixir could fit try to propose it on a project. Tehy might pick up Elixir, they might not. You can continue to learn and use Elixir on the side and be a strong advocate. There are real risks and situations where introducing a new language won’t make sense. If after a few years you really want to go into prod with Elixir and you haven’t found a place for it at your current company that would be a good time to start re-evaluating roles at other companies.

For now your highest priority should be optimizing for growth and learning in the software field. Language skills can come second.

Things change … slowly

I run a team of 4 people working almost only with Elixir, Phoenix and Nerves in Nantes.
I’ll let you know if a new position opens.

I also used to live and work in Paris, and I think it’s still a good idea to move there when you are young:

• it’s quite easy to find a job, and you’re more likely to find one which is technically challenging. The ability to change quickly and try different positions is also a big plus!

• from a personal perspective, if you live IN Paris (and not in surroundings), it’s quite a nice city to enjoy with a lot of things to do (if you have a good fullstack dev salary )

I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t lived and worked first ten years in Paris, I wouldn’t have such a good position in Nantes now (but who really knows?

Good luck!