You know that an executive left a company with slamming doors when the press release complains about his lack of commitment.

Take the press release that SAP sent out after Shai Agassi gave up his position as president of SAP's Product & Technology Group.

As the company's founder and chairman Hasso Plattner put it:

…it became apparent that Shai was not comfortable committing to a 10-15 year period which was not in keeping with his personal career timeline. Given this, I made the recommendation to the Supervisory Board that we change our plans and now adjust SAP’s executive management team responsibilities.

29 Mar 2007

To put it more bluntly: Agassi wanted to become CEO, but got really upset last month when SAP decided to extend the term of its current chief executive Henning Kagermann until 2009.

Agassi didn't intend on waiting for his employer to assess his skills before they propelled him to the corner office. If it wasn't the fast track to the top, Agassi preferred to spend his days back in the Israeli desert thinking about the environment. After all, he succeeded in Israel, where he failed in the US.