"There is a story of mysql as a company who had an employee who was not reachable for a few months." I couldn't find the story with some (brief) googling. What

"There is a story of mysql as a company who had an employee who was not reachable for a few months." I couldn't find the story with some (brief) googling. What makes it different to "they didn't turn up the office for a few months"? Were they still getting work done?