Microsoft Investigated Bill Gates Before He Left the Board (Report) | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Investigated Bill Gates Before He Left the Board (Report)

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42 pointsadrian_mrd36 comments

Sounds like it was consensual and between adults. People need to stop worrying about other people’s sex life.

If there is a power imbalance it is not appropriate. And it seems that this was the conclusion of the board.

It’s peculiar that corporations decide what’s appropriate and not, even in your love life.

It is very common that relations with subordinates are not permissible exactly because of the power imbalance. If (s)he says no, what could the repercussion be?

HR is not there for you, but for the well being of the corp.

In the same vein relations between managers and subordinates are not permitted, not to protect the well being of the subordinate, but to protect the well being of the corp.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

It’s not peculiar if the sexual relationship is intertwined with a different legally recognized relationship status, such as employment, at which point there may be a criminal violation of harassment or assault. Criminal violations, especially if repeated, can harm a company’s reputation and open the company to various forms of civil litigation.

There is nothing in the laws of this country that makes an employee/manager sexual relationship a criminal offense. There is no criminal law against "sexual harassment," which exists as a legal concept only for purposes of employment discrimination lawsuits. The only legal consequence of a manager/employee relationship is that the employee can easily turn around and sue the company for sexual harassment or wrongful termination by convincing a jury that something more happened, e.g. that the manager conditioned promotion on sex, fired the employee for ending the relationship, etc.

If you know that is a high risk scenario then the company’s legal advisors should put rules and enforcement in place to forbid such relationships and thereby transfer liability to offending employees.

There is no individual liability for sexual harassment in the US, only for employers. Anyway, my point was just to respond to someone claiming there was criminal liability.

That is tough and bad for the company... Wherever love falls is my opinion on it. I think someone in leadership position has to recuse himself from managing their love affair, but that would be his decision. Military can be another exception.

Would never date my boss though if I didn't have an exit plan. Doubt you would ever get happy if such a relationship fails.

She started making demands. Some of those, if public, would impact the perception of Microsoft and the board. It is therefore in the board's interest to be concerned.

If we took on more of a French attitude about extramarital behavior (see: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/14/french-more...), it would reduce the power that "the other woman" has... which might actually discourage some from assuming that role.

Can you describe the power imbalance? Within the company, in principle he has authority, but for one thing, he can't act with impunity. He's responsible to the Board and shareholders, so if he promoted, demoted, fired, or otherwise exercised that authority unfairly, he could be held accountable, so that power is limited.

For another thing, his authority is only one source of power. She can go to the media, where even allegations could inflict huge damage. In this case, the employee seems to hold tremendous power since she could publicize a consensual (with her), though extramarital (not likely, though possibly, consenting from his wife) relationship in the workplace.

I'm not saying good, bad, right, or wrong. I'm just wondering what the power imbalance is in practice.

>He's responsible to the Board and shareholders, so if he promoted, demoted, fired, or otherwise exercised that authority unfairly, he could be held accountable, so that power is limited.

All true, but he could say to her boss "I don't like her, make life hard so she leaves". He doesn't even need to ask for her to be fired, just make life hell: move her desk near the toilets, don't invite her to meetings, give her the shit jobs etc.

What if you were her boss? Would you tell the guy at the top "No"?

Even if you had the balls, what's to stop him then going to your boss and pointing the finger at you?

It has all sorts of repercussions.

Agreed. If the person wasn't a direct report (very unlikely as he was only a board member, not an active employee) it's not an ethics issue for the company. It's not nice to his wife but this is between him and her.

This doesn’t work like that, he’s the owner, there is always a power imbalance with any Microsoft employee.

The alleged affair would have occurred while he was still CEO. It's definitely an issue if the CEO is having affairs with employees.

Not between boss and employee, that is not “just sex”.

It is. Unless he forced her, but we aren't talking about rape here.

There is no reason why one could not separate work and a relationship. That will of course not work for everyone but you can not simply generalize and assert that it can not work in general.

In general, I am aligned.

In the specific case of an employee and CEO (or board member), it seems that having a policy against that is reasonable.

We don’t let prisoners and prison guards fraternize. We don’t let military officers fraternize with enlisted soldiers (or NCOs with junior enlisted).

If I lead a team and I’m sleeping with one of them, it’s practically impossible for everyone to feel like they’re being treated equally.

Prison and the military are both extreme environments. A business should obviously not be aspiring to be that restrictive.

Did his wife consent? She may have, but if she didn't and he publicly vowed monogamy to her, it calls his character into question.

> Board members at Microsoft Corp. made a decision in 2020 that it wasn’t appropriate for its co-founder Bill Gates to continue sitting on its board as they investigated the billionaire’s prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

> Citing unnamed sources, The Journal reported online Sunday that board members looking into the matter hired a law firm in late 2019 to conduct an investigation after a Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship with Gates over several years.

Maybe this is just gossip and private life things we should not care about. But I think this is disturbing behavior. Other articles report that he approached many more women over the years.

And then that connection with Epstein. The final straw that allegedly was the primary reason for the divorce.

This really doesn’t look right to me.

I will be very disappointed if Bill Gates is a creep. Are there accusations? Have women came forward and told their story? I honestly haven’t heard anything at this point. I will be very sad if something like that happens.

As soon as I saw that his wife left him after he gleefully associated with Epstein decades AFTER the world knew he was a pedophile... it looks bad from my perspective.

Bill knew Jeff. He knew he was a predator. He knew it all. And he smiled and invited him into his home to treat him like a brother.

I just can't imagine why you invite the most notorious pedophile in our lifetimes into your home against your wifes wishes. I have literally zero reasons why that occurs. I cannot think of a single excuse for Bill outside of just "dum as brick". But he's a very smart man. Who made a very intentional decision, I guess.

Just reports, not ‘accusations’ in any legal sense. But it doesn’t look great to me.

The anti-competitive behavior, surveillance capitalism, oligarch moves didn't tip you off?

> Other articles report that he approached many more women over the years.

I'd be careful with what you're reading into that. Approaching women isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's respectful. It's not improper in itself - it can be, but that's not specified here.

I haven't seen anything untoward about the relationship itself, only company politics and how it might impact his marriage.

I'll be honest, I'm uncomfortable with witch-hunt being the default footing, especially when it relies on assumptions that aren't given (or worst, conflicts with facts that are given). So far this is gossip within the context of their divorce. Assuming impropriety in every relationship can only be a disservice to those that do deserve the attention.

Also, one of the women he approached, the one that took him up on his offer ended up having decent life and sizable fortune. And others just rejected him and so far there's not much evidence that it wasn't the end of it in nearly all cases. And we know just about one women who took the offence.

The possibility of Business Espionage is really high.

I get that this is awfully gossipy for HN, but I am still blown away how successful this PR campaign has been waged by those working for her.

Seems unlikely that his reputation is salvageable at this point--which is the PR campaign's point.

Wait... working for whom? Melinda? Why would she want to assassinate the character of the father of her children?

Reminds me of a quote by a guy called Lord Acton:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men..."

I think the vulnerability actually occurs during the rise, not at the plateau. You suddenly have options available to you that would never have been available before, but you haven't yet internalized the fact that you cannot pursue many (or any) of these options because it would violate the previous agreements you've made with others and yourself. You haven't lost your sense of entitlement after your hard-won success.

Interesting point and I think you're probably right. And by the time you have sufficient perspective you've probably made at least a couple of bad decisions.

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