> Mullenweg offered Automattic employees six months of pay or $30,000, whichever was higher, with the stipulation that they would lose access to their work logins that same evening and would not be eligible for rehire. One hundred and fifty-nine people took the offer and left.
I can't imagine what that does to a company's output. What happens to everything those 159 people were working on? Surely not everyone else had intimate knowledge of their work, unless they were just customer support staff or something.
Also, often the people who leave at the drop of a hat are the more talented ones because they're not (or less) worried about the financial repercussions of doing so knowing they can get work elsewhere.