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Vaniya Agrawal recently announced her exit from Microsoft.
An Indian-American software engineer has accused some of Microsoft’s biggest names of “celebrating on the blood” of Palestinians. The confrontation took place during Microsoft’s 50th-anniversary celebrations on March 4 in Redmond, Washington, when Vaniya Agrawal, a company employee, interrupted a panel featuring Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella.
“50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered with Microsoft technology. How dare you? Shame on all of you for celebrating on their blood,” Ms Agrawal shouted, referring to Microsoft’s reported $133 million cloud and AI contract with Israel’s Ministry of Defence.
Ms Agrawal and another employee who joined the protest have since resigned. In a company-wide email announcing her exit, effective April 11, she wrote, “I cannot, in good conscience, be part of a company that participates in this violent injustice.”
Who is Vaniya Agarwal?
- Vaniya Agrawal is a software engineer currently based in Seattle, Washington, US. She did her Software Engineering at Arizona State University, as per her LinkedIn account.
- Ms Agrawal spent over three years at Amazon, where she joined as a Software Development Engineer in September 2019. She was later promoted. In 2023, she joined Microsoft, working as a Software Engineer in the company’s Artificial Intelligence division.
- In April, Ms Agrawal publicly announced her resignation from Microsoft in a company-wide email. Her decision followed a public protest during Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations, where she called out the company’s alleged involvement in military operations in Gaza. “Hi all, my name is Vaniya, and after 1.5 years as a software engineer at this company, I’ve decided to leave Microsoft,” she wrote in the email, citing her opposition to what she described as the company’s “participation in genocide in Gaza.”
- Before entering the tech sector, Ms Agrawal held various roles. In 2016, she worked as a medical assistant in Naperville, Illinois. In 2015, she served as a tea consultant, and in 2014, she briefly worked as a pharmacy technician.
- She also ran a small business on Etsy in 2012 for two years, selling handmade items through her shop called Vannushka.
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