My hope is that companies would learn from the brain drain side effects in the long run. You're absolutely right that greater profit is what drives this and it was intentional, but it is short-sighted.

The company I work for just terminated a substantial percentage of its workforce. It was done without truly understanding the effect on many programs. I'm now standing on a desert island, alone, trying to figure out how to continue satisfying a customer with nearly all the knowledge and talent to best do that stripped away. Doing the job of three people was hard enough before. Now I'm doing the job of X people, a variable I can't even adequately quantify now. And a lot of that work is so wildly outside of my sphere of knowledge.

Decisions that these large companies are making are causing side effects that they may not feel for many years, but they will... And it won't matter because those executives have accomplished everything they wanted for themselves in those first moments.

Don't be evil. Heh.

I really do hope a few of these companies learn. I'd love for people to not be treated as expendable assets that can be ground into dust, but as people to nourish and develop. I'd love to cheer for them. I'd love to contribute to their work.