[unoti]

I came here looking for information about why Ericsson stopped using Erlang, and for more information about Joe's firing.

The short answer seems to be that they pivoted to Java for new projects, which marginalized Erlang. Then Joe and colleagues formed Bluetail in 1998. They were bought by Nortel. Nortel was a telecom giant forming about a third of the value of the Toronto Stock Exchange. In 2000 Nortel's stock reached $125 per share, but by 2002 the stock had gone down to less than $1. This was all part of the dot com crash, and Nortel was hit particularly hard because of the dot com bubble burst corresponding with a big downturn in telecom spending.

It seems safe to look at Joe's layoff as more of a "his unit was the first to slip beneath the waves on a sinking ship" situation, as they laid off 60,000 employees or more than two thirds of their workforce. The layoff was not a sign that he may not have been pulling his weight. It was part of a big move of desperation not to be taken as a sign of the ineffectiveness of that business unit.

[cmrdporcupine]

It's very weird to me to see the word "fired" in this context. "Laid off" is more appropriate. "Fired" is very value-laden and implies fault and termination with cause. Which I'm sure if that was somehow actually true the original article author would know nothing about, nor would it be any of their business.