[jackhack]

If only. With some corporate cultures there is little to no value placed on retention. In fact, as crazy as it sounds, employees are seen as a liability. This was especially obvious during the great offshoring wave of the last decade where companies couldn't wait to shed loyal-yet-expensive employees with long work histories with replaceable contract workers on the other side of the world. We all know how well that turned out.

Microsoft's (in)famous "rank&yank" comes to mind, where the employees of each department were annually scored for performance and lowest 10% were let go. Unfortunately this was copied by quite a few other companies. In this environment, absolute performance is not enough to keep one's employment, only relative performance among peers. Therefore, it is best to work with knuckleheads, easily outperformed, than with a group of geniuses where a constant struggle will exist. Perhaps it's advantageous for the company (doubtful, as even MSFT abandoned this practice) but it's highly destructive to cultures and individual's careers.