Stolen from reddit :
Step 1: Hire new CEO/President
Step 2: New CEO/president progressively lets people go every 6-8 months to cut costs and increase profitability. "Do more with less"
Step 3: First year profits vs overhead look awesome - CEO/President gets bonus
Step 4: After 2 years, all of the talented people start to leave. They back fill with the cheapest/most junior labor they can find. They still let people go to reduce cost
Step 5: They quality/timeliness/etc start to slip and they begin to lose customers - to cover they increase the price of the product/service.
Step 6: The dependable 'lifers' who don't stand out but at the utter backbone of the company's operations start to leave and are not backfilled.
Step 7: CEO/President is promoted to a new division
Step 8: New CEO goes on a hiring spree, and brings organization back to where it was
Step 9: They spend 5 years clawing their customers back and updating their offerings
Step 10: Hire new CEO/President
The yearly and sometimes bi-yearly layoffs are getting old and desperate, much like most of the C Suite.