My thirteen-year sojourn at Ericsson is now at an end.

When I first joined, I would have been appalled if anyone had suggested that I’d work there for more than a decade. Now, I can look back with pride at all the things I’ve learned because I stuck around for a while. Ericsson is certainly the kind of company where you can work for decades and still feel that you’ve had diverse and interesting challenges all the time.

I joined Ericsson in February 1996. I had been introduced to Erlang by Bjarne Däcker and Robert Virding back in 1992, and thought it was one of the most exciting technologies I had seen so far. Back then, if you wanted to work with Erlang, Ericsson was the (only) place to be.

I’ve had the good fortune to play a significant role in the development of some very demanding products, starting from scratch, inventing stuff as we went along, meeting market challenges, going into maintenance, acquiring “legacy” status, porting to new architectures, and spinning off new products. I’ve experienced how an organization matures, as the once young and fearless grow older, get married, go on parental leave and get new priorities in life, and seen how new people come in, with new ideas and fresh excitement.

Most amazing of all has been the experience of joining a small programming language community (Erlang), fighting against the odds, and trying to find its place in the world, and then seeing it grow into (relative) ubiquity. Erlang has experienced practically exponential growth since its release as Open Source in 1998, and working as something of an ambassador for Erlang has led me to an amazing array of exciting contacts.

But now it’s time to move on. I will join my old friend Francesco Cesarini as the new CTO of Erlang Training & Consulting. ETC has come far since the time, ten years ago, when Francesco was running a one-man training and consulting shop from his flat in London. It is now an important pillar in the Erlang Community, and one of the most active participants in spreading the word about Erlang. Ever since I coughed up $1000 and became one of the first (and, I think, only) paying customer of Erlang Systems AB in 1993, I’ve felt motivated to help increase Erlang’s user base. In my new role at ETC, I will be even better positioned to do so.

I’m honored to join ETC, and feel that fresh excitement brewing again. :)

I expect to become more active in my blogging activities, and perhaps that twitter account will start seeing some activity too.