Tweets posted over the weekend attacked specific PayPal executives.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Rakesh “Rocky” Agrawal is no longer with PayPal, having left the company at some point on Friday, either before or after a Twitter rant directed at his colleagues that was posted to social networking site Twitter.
Agrawal was the Director of Strategy at PayPal, which provides online money transferring and payment services to customers. An avid tweeter, Agrawal posted several incendiary tweets to his account (@rakeshlobster) early Saturday morning, calling out specific people at the head of PayPal with profane personal attacks.
“Christina Smedley is a useless. Piece of s***,” said one tweet, referring to the company’s Vice-President of Global Communications. Another tweet read “Duck [sic] you Smedley you useless middle. manager,” while another post said that PayPal should fire a man named Don Christmas, and yet another said that Agrawal had quit the company that night itself.
These tweets have all since been deleted, but damage was apparently done, as PayPal later tweeted from its own official account that “Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance. Agrawal admitted on Sunday that the PayPal tweet was “factually correct but utterly misleading,” clarifying on Twitter his version of the events that led to him leaving the company and sending out those tweets.
Agrawal, who has a history of being outspoken on social media, tweeted over the weekend that he left the company on his own accord, saying that he emailed his letter of resignation earlier on Friday and that the tweets were the result of a new phone with a keyboard he was unable to use correctly. He also apologized for the tweets, saying that they were meant as direct messages to a specific person, according to The Wire.
Over the weekend, Agrawal shared his resignation email via Twitter, saying that he was giving his two weeks notice and that it was a “pleasure” to have worked at PayPal. Specifically, Agrawal singled out Stan Chudnovsky (Vice-President of Growth, Global Strategy and Special Ops at PayPal), David Marcus (President), and Hill Ferguson (Chief Product Officer) for compliments, and wished them “the best of luck.” Agrawal also tweeted later that he “thinks the world” of these men.
Although he has not yet confirmed his future plans, Agrawal has given indications that he may be starting his own company. In the same resignation email, he said “if you [Chudnovsky and Marcus] are interested in investing in reDesign Mobile (either personally or as PayPal) I would love to discuss it with you.” Agrawal has also tweeted that he will be taking meetings with potential investors over the next few weeks.
But the mystery of Agrawal’s departure from PayPal remains. Was he terminated, thus leading to the inflammatory tweets? Or did he resign, and finally unencumbered by a need for professional decorum, launch into a long-gestating diatribe against his former colleagues?
Or, was it really the fault of a new keyboard that a veteran of the IT industry did not know how to use?
Agrawal is an alumnus of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Before his time with PayPal, he worked at Microsoft as a Product Manager, and was also a Program Director at America Online (AOL).