That makes no sense, especially because on of them was on paternity leave and is probably not involved in getting some numbers from the database.

The guy had 5 years to get the numbers right, but didn't. (if that's the cause)

You don't think a high level exec is on the hook to pull a few numbers during their paternity leave to help seal a multi billion dollar deal?

Its more about the process of how that number was derived.

What is your thinking behind "must be"?

One person (their VP Product) was on paternity. You don't fire people like that unless they did something very very wrong.

Misrepresenting spam/bot accounts would fall under that bucket. If the number of spam accounts is like 20% (instead of 5%), not only would the deal fall through, other shareholders would sue twitter.

Not sure this misrepresentation would count as financial misrepresentation (which results in jail etc under Sarbanes-Oxley)

> You don't fire people like that unless they did something very very wrong.

If he's on paternity leave he won't have been responsible for a number that came out last week.

Well, he is still responsible for the process through which the number was derived (assuming the process was put in place by him).

Pretty sure twitter have a dashboard with these numbers, and don't do it manually. So if this dashboard makes data up, I'm pretty sure VP of Product's head is on the table, since it's a really sensitive data to report wrong. And twitter firing him can be a way to protect the top exec from the SEC, blaming him for everything.

> You don't fire people like that unless they did something very very wrong.

That's assuming the firings are fully rational, and no self-interest was involved.

I can easily imagine a number of scenarios where Parag fired the guy knowing he had done nothing wrong in order to attempt to protect himself in some way.

Those exits were not planned, one guy was even on parental leave, so it was definitely a rushed thing. That always stinks when an acquisition is taking place.

An alternate explanation is Parag knows this is going to get ugly and is sparing his exec team from going through this with him.