There is nobody who knows the inner workings of a company like a finance director. So when three high-profile CFOs leave their jobs at richly acclaimed late-stage startups in quick succession, we notice.

This week, OpenSea CFO Brian Roberts left the web3 company less than a year after ingestion the job. Days later, Brex CFO Adam Swiecicki left the expense management firm to join Rippling, another company that recently expanded into the expense management space. The shuffle came on the heels of Brex who announced it would have to cut 11% of its workforce. (The former CFO, who stepped down to allow Swiecicki to take over, is back in his original position).

But that is not everything. Noom, a diet and health coaching platform, confirmed its CFO, Mike Noonan, is leaving the job two years after joininghours before australiabusinessblog.com learned that the company was making a series of layoffs.

While the CFO’s departure is reportedly unrelated to the layoffs, has anything ever been so simple? After all, layoffs were the result of the need to strengthen financial institutions in an uncertain market, literally the job of a finance director.