I don't know if it's lucky that the job didn't just cease to exist or not in that case. I know when my father retired his job disappeared. One could ask if the job was that important if they could remove it, but in this case it was deemed non-vital, so no effort was made to replace him.

Ironically, it was focused on evaluating ways to transfer knowledge to new hires to account for the brain drain incurred due to retiring boomer population.