Microsoft Execs Told Bill Gates To Stop Emailing Female Employee In 2007

Insiders said that two top executives at Microsoft advised the company's billionaire founder Bill Gates "more than a decade ago," to stop emailing female colleagues.

Microsoft learned in 2008 that Gates had sent "inappropriate" messages to a female employee a year before, company spokesperson Frank Shaw told Wall Street Journal.

Two top Microsoft executives, current president Brad Smith, and former HR chief Lisa Brummel, have met with Gates and asked him to stop acting out. Gates is believed to have admitted that the emails were a bad idea and would stop sending them.

Sources added that the executives briefed some of Microsoft's board of directors, and a board committee discussed the situation. According to the people, the board decided that no further action was necessary because there was no physical interaction.

Shaw said the company became aware of the emails written in 2007 in 2008, soon before Mr. Gates left as a full-time employee. Gates allegedly sent emails, saying he wanted to meet up with the female employee outside of work and off-campus, the Microsoft President continued. "He [Gates] and the employee were flirty but not obviously sexual," he said. According to Shaw, that they were judged improper. The spokesperson also mentioned that the employee never filed a complaint about the incident previously gone unreported.

Gates' spokesperson Bridgitt Arnold said in a written statement per Daily Beast: “These claims are false, recycled rumors from sources who have no direct knowledge, and in some cases have significant conflicts of interest.”

After Bill and Melinda French Gates' divorced last summer, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal revealed that the Microsoft founder had inappropriate behavior with female colleagues while at the business.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft's board of directors hired a law firm in 2019 to look into Gates' alleged affair with a female engineer in 2000. Gates made provocative statements about women, according to six former and present Microsoft employees who spoke to The New York Times.

According to different news accounts, Gates met with businessman and sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein several times.

In 2020, Gates stepped down from the boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway, and in 2008, he resigned as CEO of Microsoft.

Satya Nadella, the company's current top executive, claimed credit for altering the company's culture from cutthroat to a more open atmosphere, all while raising the company's bottom line.