The environment and the company culture really changed in the mid '00s. The company started to get a little to big for it's own good and became a really cutthroat environment, bordering on toxic. Starbucks used to attract such a high caliber of talent to management, but because they stopped really, truly caring about their employees they lost TONS of great people to companies where career growth was actually possible and not just a carrot that was dangled in front of people, and where they were paid what they were worth. I left shortly after the "reinvention" of the company by Schultz in '08 and saw great people ushered out the door during the store closures without so much as a goodbye. Not cool. Not how a "people company" would handle downsizing.