In fact, at my old job, the entire team learned Clojure on the job. I was the only hire who had learned it prior to being hired. Our codebase was fine and very maintainable.

The other teams were similarly new to Clojure. Most people spent a few months doing increasingly more advanced things until they were comfortable with the language and the codebase.

The main issue for complete beginners is learning to grapple with the different development setup compared to what they might be used to, i.e. interactive development on a live system using an editor-integrated REPL. We basically set everyone up with IntelliJ and parinfer. Paredit was optional, as was alternative editors such as emacs.

IntelliJ + parinfer is a similar development experience to Python. The only part that is foreign in that case is the interactive development of a live system which the new devs quickly come around to seeing the benefits of. It helps having seniors who point out the new concepts.

Not my experience, but you do need senior devs who are good at Clojure to be reviewing and helping the juniors

> if I had a tough day, my clj code will look like rubbish

This may not be a reflection of the language