The year 2020 came with Shocking news and one such as Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates’ revelation of an affair with an employee 20 years ago.
We all were sinking in the information that a new report by the Wall Street Journal came into the spotlight. According to their report, a Microsoft spokesperson in 2007 confirmed to AFP that Gates 2007, a full-time President and employee of Microsoft, sent flirty emails to a female staffer and invited her to meet outside of work.
In 2019 a letter from a Microsoft corporation engineer about an affair with Bill Gates led to the departure of Gates from the board in 2020, but apparently, that was not the first time Microsoft directors encountered such news about him. According to the people familiar with the situation and close with the matter in the emails, they were flirtatious and propositioned the midlevel female employee by then marrying gates.
As reported by the journal, two Microsoft executives then-general counsel and chief people officer confronted gates. Bill Gates didn’t deny the exchanges and told him he would stop. Later the executive members shared the brief with the board, who decided not to take further action since no physical interaction was taken.
A Spokesman for the tech giant said, ” Microsoft has nothing to share except for confirming the accuracy of the report.”
Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesperson, said that the company became aware of emails sent in 2007 shortly before Mr Bill Gates retired as a full-time employee. Further, he added, ” though Emails were not overtly sexual, they were deemed to be inappropriate.” Moreover, the employee never made a complaint that hadn’t been previously reported.
Talking about the letter in 2019, Frank Shaw, the spokesperson, said the relationship occurred back in 2002, but the tech giant didn’t become aware of it until 2019. According to people familiar with the matter, CEO Satya Nadella and Mr Smith, now Microsoft’s president and vice chairman, were among those who reviewed the letter.
One of the world’s richest people was a chief executive until 2000 and a full-time employee until 2008, and chairman until 2014. After serving for four decades, he resigned in March 2020 after a board committee of Microsoft hired a law firm to investigate the matter of sexual relationship claims over a 2019 letter by a female engineer. Former president Gates recently got separated from his wife Melinda after 27 years of marriage.
