It's possible that you're both right. According to the author they had hired new management spots. It could be that this new management decided they needed cert

It's possible that you're both right. According to the author they had hired new management spots. It could be that this new management decided they needed certain specialists positions filled, but didn't have the budget to do so unless, of course, they could free up budget by letting others go. And that's often the problem with generalists; if they can't place you into a specific 'need' spot on the org chart then you often have a target on your head instead. In other words, maybe he didn't get fired for being a generalist, but instead was fired in favour of a hiring a specialist.