Sources: Microsoft's board decided in 2020 Gates should leave the board as it probed claims Gates sought to initiate an affair with a Microsoft engineer in 2000

Some Microsoft directors began an investigation in 2019 into woman's allegations of prior sexual relationship with Bill Gates …

Wall Street Journal 2021-05-17

Context & Ripple Effects

Microsoft's March 2020 announcement said Gates had stepped down from the board while remaining a technology adviser to Satya Nadella. The reported board decision supplies a governance rationale for that departure, rather than treating it as a routine transition.

The allegations were part of a broader workplace-conduct record: related coverage also described Gates pursuing women at Microsoft and creating discomfort at work. Microsoft later commissioned an outside review of its harassment policies and investigations.

First-order effects

Microsoft's board separated Gates from its formal oversight body after examining the allegation, while the company retained him in an advisory capacity.
The investigation put the handling of senior-figure misconduct—and the board's response to it—at the center of Microsoft's internal governance.

Second-order effects

Microsoft's later outside review of harassment policies and investigations turned an individual board matter into a review of companywide reporting and response procedures.
Keeping Gates as an adviser preserved access to his counsel but left Microsoft to distinguish advisory influence from formal board authority.

Third-order effects

Microsoft's plan for annual reviews of internal harassment claims points toward more recurring disclosure and board-level accountability for workplace-conduct investigations.
For founder-linked companies, formal exits from governance roles may increasingly coexist with informal strategic influence, making the boundaries between them a central governance question.

The trend: Workplace-misconduct allegations are pushing large technology companies to pair senior-leader accountability with more formal, recurring transparency around internal investigations.

Discussion

@dnvolz Dustin Volz on x
News: Microsoft board members decided Bill Gates needed to step down from its board in 2020 as they pursued an investigation into the billionaire's prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate https://www.wsj.com/...
@kimcrayton1 @kimcrayton1 on x
There's ALWAYS a story behind the public one It's seldom that these are one offs...there's usually a pattern of harmful behavior that systems, institutions, and policies have been keeping secret https://twitter.com/...
@emilyglazer Emily Glazer on x
WSJ exclusive: Microsoft directors started an investigation in 2019 into allegations by a female staffer of a sexual relationship with Bill Gates. Gates decided to resign from the board before the probe was completed. Our deep dive into what happened: https://www.wsj.com/...
@deleolojede Dele Olojede on x
Journalism is really going to the dogs when this tawdriness, in which no harm was done, rises to the level of “WSJ Exflusive.” https://www.wsj.com/...
@jeffhauser Jeff Hauser on x
From education policy to intellectual property and vaccines, Bill Gates has been an influential voice for views that fancy his life story as vastly more meritorious than it is. https://www.wsj.com/...
@yashar Yashar Ali on x
It's amazing what can stay secret if all the parties involved (in this case at least 20 people knew about this) want it to stay secret. https://twitter.com/...
@newley Newley Purnell on x
Members of the board tasked with the matter hired a law firm to conduct an investigation in late 2019 after a Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship over years with Mr. Gates, the people said. https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@cindygallop Cindy Gallop on x
'As part of her discussions with Microsoft, the employee asked that Ms. French Gates read her letter, people familiar with the matter said. It couldn't be learned whether Ms. French Gates read the letter.' @WSJ https://www.wsj.com/...
@kimmasters Kim Masters on x
This is not looking good. https://twitter.com/...
@jasonzweigwsj Jason Zweig on x
Microsoft board members began an investigation in 2019 into a woman's allegations of prior sexual relationship with Bill Gates; Mr. Gates's spokeswoman says his decision to leave board in 2020 wasn't related to the matter. https://www.wsj.com/...
@davidenrich David Enrich on x
Exclusive: The breakup of Bill and Melinda Gates's marriage is shedding new light on an open secret within Microsoft and his foundation: Gates has at times behaved badly in work-related settings. A @nytimes investigation. @FlitterOnFraud @MattGoldstein26 https://www.nytimes.com/.…
@gmwatch @gmwatch on x
It's not just with his Foundation that @BillGates makes all the wrong calls (GMOs, industrial ag, plutonium reactors, geoengineering, fossil fuel investments...)👇 https://twitter.com/...
@wsj @wsj on x
Microsoft board members decided Bill Gates needed to step down in 2020 due to a prior relationship with an employee, people familiar with the matter said https://www.wsj.com/...
@rabiasquared @rabiasquared on x
One by one our heroes are unmasked https://twitter.com/...
@carolynryan @carolynryan on x
“Multiple people said that during their marriage, Mr. Gates engaged in work-related behavior that they said was inappropriate for a person at the helm of a major publicly traded company” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@gzuckerman Gregory Zuckerman on x
Whoa— “On at least a few occasions, Mr. Gates pursued women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to people with direct knowledge of his overtures. In meetings, he was at times dismissive toward his wife, witnesses said. https://twit…
@razibkhan @razibkhan on x
were a huge spate of bill-gates-is-a-massive-asshole/ spergish-dick pieces in the late 1990s/early 2000s during the time when MS was under antitrust investigation. none of this behavior surprises was always this. but he was/is throwing lots of $ around for the past few decades ht…
@johncusack John Cusack on x
You called it - https://twitter.com/...
@kofinas Demetri Kofinas on x
Anyone else remember when Bill Gates invested $4 million into a project to create killer mosquitoes that f*ck each other to death? There were signs. That's all I'm saying. https://nypost.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@noahshachtman Noah Shachtman on x
EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Epstein gave Bill Gates advice on how to end his ‘toxic’ marriage https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ...
@xeni @xeni on x
Told you. https://twitter.com/...
@yashar Yashar Ali on x
This is explains his sudden resignation https://twitter.com/...
@lindseyboylan Lindsey Boylan on x
One more time for the billionaires in the back. Powerful men need to stop viewing their employees as their dating pool. They need to hold their team accountable for sexual harassment. And they need to not hang out w/ ppl like Jeffrey Epstein. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@rmac18 Ryan Mac on x
One of the richest most scrutinized people on the planet and still... a creepy boss. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@flitteronfraud Emily Flitter on x
Thread: It wasn't easy being married to Bill Gates. Melinda French Gates wanted an equal partnership. She & Mr. Gates never quite achieved that. We reviewed a number of instances in which Mr. Gates's behavior created thorny issues for Ms. French Gates https://www.nytimes.com/...
@jenkirkman Jen Kirkman on x
This isn't about me BUT allow me to make it so. My 1st year as a comedian (1997) I was oddly doing sets about how awful Gates is cuz I didn't trust men who were obsessed with the internet. Folks always got mad & said Bill's great due to his foundation. Oh 22 yr old Jen, see this?…
@mattzeitlin Matthew Zeitlin on x
Never a sentence you want to see in a story about your divorce https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@kate_kelly_esq Kate Kelly on x
You can't trust the nerdy looking ones. You can't trust the ones who pretend to just “ask you out” innocently (as billionaire bosses who are married). You can't even trust the ones who don't seem outwardly aggressive. I mean, we all could have guessed he was a creep, but... https…
@daryrezvani @daryrezvani on x
I'll go ahead and say it. This shit makes all his work in Africa exponentially more terrifying. https://twitter.com/...
@noahshachtman Noah Shachtman on x
“Gates, in turn, encouraged Epstein to rehabilitate his image in the media following his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and discussed Epstein becoming involved with the Gates Foundation,” @kbriquelet and @LachCartwright report https://www.thedailybeast.…
@phylogenomics Jonathan Eisen on x
Here's hoping Melinda Gates gets way more than half their assets. https://twitter.com/...

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