Tesla shares dropped sharply Friday after the electric-car company disclosed that its chief of accounting was leaving the company only weeks after coming aboard.

The upheaval in the executive ranks emerged hours after the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, appeared live on YouTube taking a deep drag on what appeared to be a marijuana cigarette during an interview with comedian Joe Rogan, an advocate for legalizing marijuana.

In early trading, Tesla’s shares were off as much as 9 percent. Early Friday afternoon, they were down almost 7 percent, at about $262.

The hiring of the accounting chief, Dave Morton, had been announced days before Musk abruptly took to Twitter last month and declared that he was planning to take Tesla private and had “funding secured.”

But in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Tesla said Morton had given notice of his resignation Tuesday and that it was effective immediately.

“Since I joined Tesla on Aug. 6, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations,” Morton said in a statement included in the filing. “As a result, this caused me to reconsider my future. I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla’s leadership or its financial reporting.”

Nearly a dozen top executives have left Tesla this year. Sarah O’Brien, vice president for communications, and Gabrielle Toledano, the head of human resources, have departed in the last few weeks.

The upheaval that began with the abortive bid to take the company’s shares off the public market has deeply dented Tesla’s stock and brought new scrutiny of Musk.

The sudden resignation of Morton could be of interest to securities regulators. The San Francisco office of the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating not only Musk’s unusual tweet about having “funding secured” to take the car company private, but broader issues surrounding company disclosures about production goals with its latest offering, the Model 3.