If others are willing to voluntarily follow you out, I would say it points to some internal power struggle that underlies this whole affair.
When stuff like this happens it’s an insane abandon ship moment. Of course, obviously it is, but people will act in ways that are strange if you don’t know what’s going on internally.
Things like smooth transitions don’t happen and people basically willing to crawl into a cannon and get hurled away if it removes that person NOW.