I'm with you on this one (except the Elixir part, never tried, can't comment).

Many past NodeJS stories/use-cases from the big name companies like LinkedIN, eBay, Wal-mart seemed to use NodeJS as a front-end server. The back-end code is still something else (or perhaps even legacy code). I know someone who works for another big name company that uses NodeJS for their new project doing exactly this as well: a front-end server that communicates with multiple/many services behind the scenes. Those services are written in Java/C#/C++.

Meanwhile, a few other NodeJS based commercial apps (e.g. Trello) does not look too complicated when they begin the project...