Microsoft fired their QA because at the end of the day, they are beholden to shareholders. And those shareholders want higher profits. And if you want higher profits, you cut costs.

It's not a culture problem. It's a 'being a business' problem, which unfortunately affects all publicly-traded companies.

Shareholders are, on average, not this activist. A CEO can in fact run a public company with a long-term outlook instead of pumping the numbers for just the next quarter.

Are businesses expected to boom and bust? Cost cutting is fine if you don't kill the company in the process.