[tombert]

It depends on your location, I think.

Here in New York, it's not too hard to find Erlang enthusiasts, particularly ones that work on Wall Street.

That said, no one seemed to have even heard of the language in Dallas when I lived there.

So the long-story-short of this is that if you don't mind doing some remote-hiring, it's not too hard to find workers, and things like Ejabberd have a ton of tutorials on writing modules.