There is no transfer pricing mechanism for programmers like there is for footballers. Worse, programmers are often loyal to a particular technology or concept. So in order to extract the valuable staff from a company it's necessary to destroy that thing so the staff can be reallocated profitably.
"So in order to extract the valuable staff from a company it's necessary to destroy that thing so the staff can be reallocated profitably."
I wonder how often this actually works. In most cases where I've seen this (or heard of it happening first hand from people I know) the vast majority of the people you'd want to keep were out the door of the new place pretty close to as soon as possible (meaning, as soon as the contracts allow, or the golden handcuffs are mostly off, or whatever is relevant to the specific situation).
On the inside there tends to be a pretty predictable path: New management tells everyone nothing will change materially, everything inevitably changes very quickly, people get disgruntled and take off for other opportunities (at a quickly accelerating pace as the old guard sees all their former colleagues from the old place leaving the new).
"Technology" is rarely re-used per se.