Far too many companies act this way, whether it's cutting benefits, shipping jobs to cheaper workers overseas, etc. ... it looks good on paper in the short term, but 1, 2, 5, or 10 years down the road you look at the ruins of your business and wonder why profits are still down and your employees have no loyalty.
Yep. Personally, I think the biggest problem nowadays is that many Board of Directors and other company owners simply don't even bother looking at how their businesses operate, they simply want X amount of money, and they think that by paying their executives and CEOs millions of dollars (most in the form of bonuses that will only be paid for reaching some revenue or profitability target) they'll get results.
What happens in reality is Enron.
Most businesses simply have their natural levels of profitability, growth, and success based on their product and the state of the market. You can't, for instance, expect D&D to become a mass-market product overnight. It's a niche product for a niche market. You'll make a few million out of it, but don't expect something in the hundred-million range (that's what video games are for).
Still, to be absolutely fair to WoTC and Hasbro, the whole DDI & Gleemax thing is a pretty big mess. And personally, I was one of the many voices raising concerns about the viability of the whole enterprise, and it greatly irked me that the response was basically "Shut up troll, Gleemax is really going great!"
So, while I think some people who did outstanding work didn't deserve to be fired (Solice, in particular, was about the sole voice from WoTC who made an effort to listen to people pointing out Gleemax's glaring problems), I can't really say that I'm surprised by the layoffs, nor can I be wholly sympathetic to all of the folks who lost their jobs.
Yes, people get laid off all the time because of bad decisions by top management. But there are also people who are rightly laid off because they frankly screwed up. This whole thing seems like a mix of both.