Just as much as the business guy wants to avoid the vagaries of a software dev bailing, he's going to have a hard time understanding how good software is create

Just as much as the business guy wants to avoid the vagaries of a software dev bailing, he's going to have a hard time understanding how good software is created at one hour a week. It was worth it for the business guy to give up a bigger piece of the pie in order to ensure that the business survives. That he is unable to see that, is either because he is unreasonably greedy or short sighted. Now he is delayed for X months or years because he let his greed get the better of him. Once a business is well into money making machine territory, the impact that a single good engineer is going to make is dramatically reduced. At that point, the leverage is much lower and the business person can make decisions like you described.