You hit on something that can kill a company…instability in staffing.
Some things take years to learn to do correctly. A mold maker, an injection molder, a process development chemist, etc. can take decades to develop skills to a high level.
You can’t just run out there to the job market and find someone who can do the exact same thing as the guy you let go.
For example in Puerto Rico there was a pharmaceutical company that made a particular drug. One man could reach into the reactor with gloved hands and determine if a lot was good or bad. He was right every time but try as he might he couldn’t teach his skill to anyone else.
When he retired they had to shut that production line down.
To some extent I blame this on the rise of the professional MBA. Companies ended up with executive ranks full of people who didn’t know jack about the company, its products, or how its customers wanted to use its products, but boy, they sure knew how to *manage*! They brought along with them this idea that actual productive workers were fungible, and any monkey could be trained to do any other monkey’s task, with no skill, talent, or special knowledge needed.
This company was in the high tech industry, delivering very specialized products to unforgiving (mostly .gov or .mil) customers, and to be successful it needed intelligent and *dedicated* workers. By the end I was getting pretty tired of being saddled with new hires who ticked off all the right DEI/EEOC checkboxes but had no aptitude for the industry in the first place and no desire to do anything beyond keeping a chair in a cubicle warm for 8 hours. You can’t mentor, train, and coach people who have no curiosity and no desire to become better at their jobs!
On my way out I was able to help some of my better people get better jobs at other companies, but I wish I’d been able to do more for them.