> First-hand, what I've seen happen is that your most talented people, who are the most in demand, leave the organization quite quickly

True. The first time I came across this effect was reading the book about the IBM disaster: Big Blues https://www.amazon.com/Big-Blues-Unmaking-Paul-Carroll/dp/05...

After twenty years working in the field, my conclusion on this is: the good worker for the people in power is irrelevant. They want to get rid of anyone and that's it.

As Microsoft was the IBM of it's day (which is certainly in it's evening, if not quite over).

Here is an good book on the trouble IBM was in before it re-invented itself as a professional services company:

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Blues-Unmaking-Paul-Carroll/dp/051...

A lot of the themes that seem to apply to Microsoft now applied to IBM back in the 80's and will no doubt apply to Google ten years from now.