And employees are important??

So I learn yesterday that one of my good friends and a great developer quits from my company. And of course, I am not thrilled! I decided to blog about it to express some of my frustrations. It so happens, although the topic is not itself related to architecture, more often than not, architects or people in that role are generally put into leadership positions and expected to deliver in a team environment.
I got this important lesson from my Dad a long time ago (he retired as an executive in a manufacturing company) about how the most important thing as a manager is to make sure you hire and nurture good people. Although I had largely ignored that statement, it started to resurface when I started facing situations where I had to compensate for the lack of experience or skills on the team. I spent countless hours trying to explain the problem domain, trying to ramp people up on the frameworks being used etc., at the same time keeping an eye on delivery dates. It helped, but not to the degree I had expected.
My current company has the philosophy of lean and mean operations, with very little cost overheads. And there are definitely pros and cons of this approach. A lot of us (including two of the founders) came from my previous company where exactly the opposite was true (excesive spending! But then again it was the dot-com era! Who cared!) So I do understand the drive to keep the costs low. But what happens is because of such an approach is that there isn't enough investment internally.

• Managers (or lack of thereof) are busy trying to grow the topline.
• There is hardly ever any bench and if there is, there is no active management of it
• Lack of structure ensuring delivery quality
• Always hiring on-demand doesnt allow teams to gel, putting pressure on delivery leadership
• And I could go on and on...

Of course, on the positive side, and its definitely a *huge* positive, is that we have never had a single layoff. We are always short on resources (not intended to be a pun!) to delivery on the pipeline and so, we don't have to really worry whether we will stay in business.
I did try and communicate this out to the decision makers within the company, and it did seem like at least a few of them acknowledged the fact. But I have yet to see follow-up or any changes on the ground with regards to the issue.
There probably is a middle ground where there is fiscally conservative policy but at the same time, adequate investment back into the company. I would love to hear others experiences in this matter and any pointers on how to go about improving the situation.