Ahem... not to sound sarcastic but... everything... in a company... is a cost center. A good company knows you need to spend money to make money, in fact a lot

Ahem... not to sound sarcastic but... everything... in a company... is a cost center. A good company knows you need to spend money to make money, in fact a lot of cost is reported ad a % of sales, meaning if you grow your sales you grow your cost. I really don't understand where your views are coming from, but they seem to be very biased. And remember that executives at public companies (like Apple) sell stock, not cost, and stock goes up based on expectations, not only cutting costs, meaning you sometimes are better off spending (like in R&D or in customer service) and give the expectation of a growing and solid company than cutting down all spend and give the idea that the firm has no future because managers only look things short term.