Honestly, I don't. There is enough public information about the brash attitudes of this company's execs that anyone working for a company like this should know that the lowest level engineers working on a technical problem like this are eventually just going to get thrown under the bus.
I hope this is a lesson learned for smart and impressionable engineers about where to work.
My point - it's difficult for me to feel the same anxiety someone might feel in this situation when they equally ignored the risks of something that is easily identifiable. They very likely felt elated when they joined because the company was seen as cool, hip, and by all objective means is/was successful (valuation, # of users, etc).
Senior Developer in the "outside world" typically means Associate in the banks, and VP is the next rung up from Associate, so VP really is just one hop from Senior Developer.
Just how they do things there.
And its not unheard of. My sister-in-law worked from startup contributor to Cisco VP by applying for the next job up, one at a time, from company to company.
I was an intern in a team where everyone who's been in the company for more than a year was a VP.
After vents like this juniors turn into seniors, seniors into VPs, and VPs going on sabbatical.