A friend of mine works in the publishing business. He equated the previous few CEOs of his (large) company to locusts.
They move through, cut cost by laying of people. That leads to great profit increases for a quarter or two, after which the lack of qualified employees shows its toll.
By the time that problems become apparent the CEO collected a huge bonus and moved on, leaving the mess for somebody else to cleanup.
> He equated the previous few CEOs of his (large) company to locusts.
I'm not sure locusts is correct, but mercenaries definitely is: in this day and age, short-tenure CEOs are brought in specifically to raise stock prices over the short term (or in rarer situations, to take the knocks coming with a change of direction leading to short-term raises of stock prices with the next mercenary), regardless of the long-term outlook of the company.
Their outlook is generally under 24 months, and their job is to do everything they can to artificially inflate stock price in that time-span. This leads to scorched eath strategies instead of long-term planning and sustainability, since they won't be there when trouble hits the door. It's basically the tragedy of the commons all over again.
They move through, cut cost by laying of people. That leads to great profit increases for a quarter or two, after which the lack of qualified employees shows its toll.
By the time that problems become apparent the CEO collected a huge bonus and moved on, leaving the mess for somebody else to cleanup.