Lots of media outlets have made a fuss about Rakesh “Rocky” Agrawal’s departure from PayPal, and now he wants to be super-clear: No, he wasn’t fired, and no, he wasn’t told to quit or else get fired.
In a post on LinkedIn today, Agrawal points to certain official PayPal tweets that gave people the wrong idea about why he left.
“For starters, I quit PayPal on my own accord,” he wrote. “PayPal put out a highly misleading tweet that was designed to make people think I was fired. That was not the case. My final paperwork from PayPal reflects the truth — I quit.”
For those just tuning into this game now, Agrawal’s own tweets brought a lot of attention to him. He criticized certain PayPal employees and made many typographical errors. By then, he has said, he had left PayPal.
June 5th: The AI Audit in NYC
Join us next week in NYC to engage with top executive leaders, delving into strategies for auditing AI models to ensure fairness, optimal performance, and ethical compliance across diverse organizations. Secure your attendance for this exclusive invite-only event.
In today’s post Agrawal enumerates the actual reasons for leaving. He didn’t feel comfortable giving the PayPal view when he didn’t always agree with it. He felt the company couldn’t very well get rid of poor employees or keep the great ones around. And now he can be as opinionated as he wants, as head of his consulting firm, reDesign Mobile.
Agrawal previously contributed to VentureBeat as a guest author.
