When I left Uber, some said I was fired. It hurt: Techie-turned-YouTuber with 2 million subscribers

Akshay Saini runs a YouTube channel and is a mentor and founder at Namaste Dev. (Right) The performance award he received during his stint as a software developer at Uber. (Image credit: Akshay Saini)

A former Uber software engineer‑turned‑YouTuber who now runs the coding‑education platform NamasteDev and has over 2 million YouTube subscribers, has spoken out about speculation on social media that he was fired from Uber — a rumour he says was “hurtful” despite his strong performance record.

In a detailed post on X, Akshay Saini on Monday said that after he resigned from Uber, “some people on social media started saying I was fired… They created full stories in their head.” He added that what pained him was not the need for validation, but how confidently strangers could narrate events in his life “like they were in the room when decisions were made.”

'I was one of the highest-performing engineers on my team'

Saini clarified that just one quarter before he left Uber, he received the company’s Impact Award, recognising him as the best engineer of the quarter in his organisation. He said he was rated “outstanding” in both manager and peer reviews. He also shared a picture of the trophy he received in 2021 for being the best engineer in his team that quarter.

Tracing his career journey, Saini wrote that nothing he achieved was accidental: he had worked across small startups, Paytm, and eventually Uber — consistently moving through promotions, leading projects end‑to‑end, and spending weekends learning new technologies to upskill. He noted that even during earlier stages, when his salary was low, he never reduced effort, believing instead that “if I become so good, my salary has no option but to grow.”

Saini said he no longer gets angry at online speculation because “that’s just how social media works.” Instead, he emphasised the discipline and consistency behind his transition from engineer to content creator to founder.

Message to young professionals: 'Your grind will not betray you'

In his post, Saini urged workers who feel underpaid or unnoticed not to reduce effort but to increase skill.

“Don’t reduce your effort because your salary is small. Increase your skill so much that your opportunities become big,” he wrote — adding that hard work “may not pay immediately or loudly, but one day it will quietly put you exactly where you deserve to be.”

Saini concluded that when that moment comes, “random comments won’t matter at all.”