[macintux]

On the other hand, as has been pointed out in HN ad nauseam, developers who look for jobs in more obscure languages tend to be higher skilled: they've already self-selected for curiosity and willingness to extend their skills.

At Basho, we hired developers to work on Riak who had no Erlang experience. It's a remarkably simple language, syntactically, and the lack of types makes it easier to get up to speed.

(There are, of course, countless other challenges that it brings, where an experienced Erlang person or three can make a big difference.)

[gourabmi]

I have been working in Erlang for almost 5 years now. I want to add my experience as anecdote. I joined the current company because it was solving an interesting problem and just happened to use Erlang. I didn't self select for curiosity or learning a new language. Erlang was the tool available to me do the work that I wanted to do.

Cheers to all you Basho/Riak folks. I have worked with one before!

[macintux]

May I ask where? Always keeping an eye out for companies using Erlang.