Think about it this way (going to relate this to a far less both unjust and tragic circumstance). My boss has been working here for 13 years, in that time he's developed a piece of software that's become the backbone of our business. This year they've decided to basically deprecate the whole operation and buy an off the shelf software that we're to customize.
As an employee, he's put his heart and soul into this software that we've worked on. And its' being thrown away. It's somewhat tragic and in some ways unjust. But he's an employee, and this is a role change for him.