I am moderately amused that my post of a counter article, summary, and musings got down-voted. With that in mind, in my experiences, a good chuck of the information at company meetings is information the employees already know through their communications with each other. It's more than feasible that an employee would stay for the 1% that is new and/or truly interests him, and then leave for the stuff he or she was already aware of.

Your use of the generic 'MSFT employees' is misleading. Your statement suggests that MSFT employees in general consider traffic more important that the CEO laying out the companies future. That statement is essentially false. Some tiny number left early. Just like the year before, and the year before.