Bill Gates’s path to forced resignation and how the image of the “good boy” was destroyed

The ousting of Bill Gates is a fact, it takes place day after day after the announcement of his divorce and the revelations about how he was “resigned” from the Microsoft board after the allegations of inappropriate behavior in the office.

The richest man in the world for a number of years, with a fortune of $ 130 billion today, managed to build a jealous public image: Bill Gates the intellect, Bill Gates the formidable businessman, Bill Gates the devoted philanthropist.

From the very first moment in the business world, the public learned about the love-hate relationship with Steve Jobs, but also about how this 13-year-old who hacked the first computers in his youth managed to Build a Kojam Empire |.

His story has always been full of examples of hard work, business acumen and battles against everyone.

Sometimes the narrative was interrupted by controversial news, even accusations of treason, but the media were always there to continue to build the Gates edifice.

When he became the youngest billionaire in the world at the age of 31, everyone was talking about the dizziness of magnetism that this “nerd” seemed to have.

At 39, when he became the richest man in the world, everyone adored the wonder of the tech industry, the new prophet of Silicon Valley.

And of course when in 2010 Bill Gates and Warren Buffett announced it Giving Pledge, the initiative for billionaires to donate half their fortunes to charity, charity had found its new face.

This is how Bill Gates went down in history as a clumsy computer, a nerd who did it with his mind and sweat.

And then decided to divorce…

The “new” Bill Gates

Big newspaper revelations about the deeds of the Microsoft co-founder are now raining down. It all started with the announcement of his divorce from Melinda after 27 years of good coexistence.

Only the new image that comes out is clearly less flattering. The cosmopolitan Gates, this form of door next door that most people could identify with, unlike many eccentric croissants, is falling apart day by day.

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal now portray him as incurable women, indicating that he used Microsoft as a place to fish for ephemeral relationships.

Reports were few at first, several employees and former Microsoft employees finally came out to the Times to talk about the “awkward flirting” and “inappropriate behavior” of the boss.

Some clearly said that they were “thrown”, knowing that this in a workplace was sexual harassment.

Corresponding mantas are now coming from his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where sources claim that he treated his wife “disparagingly”, wanting to show who is in charge of the game.

And she showed it to an organization that has funded countless actions to improve the role and social position of women.

The “uncomfortable” workplace

The very idea of ​​course that Gates recruited his high-ranking position in Microsoft to secure a sly date with his employees should not impress anyone if we think about exactly how his marriage began.

It is known that Bill met and started dating Melinda French in 1987, when she went to work in the marketing department of Microsoft! They met at a business dinner and Bill did not waste his time.

As Melinda revealed in 2016, even his mom had been recruited by Bill, who had a relationship with Duke University (where Melinda studied), to learn about her past.

She eventually left Microsoft in 1996, as Mrs. Gates now, to take care of her family.

Even this story that indicates the power dynamics that Bill treated his company, even this one was played in the media as a tender love story. Obviously forgetting who one was and who the other inside Microsoft.

The resignation that was not a resignation

As everyone knows, Bill Gates resigned from Microsoft’s board in 2020. What no one knew was that his resignation came amid a scandal.

The giant’s board had hired a law firm in 2019 to investigate an employee’s allegations that he had an affair with Gates in 2000, just six years after his marriage.

The revelation – “fire” was recently made by the Wall Street Journal, adding more fuel to the fire of inappropriate professional behavior of the co-founder of Microsoft. The Board Microsoft has decided that it would be better for Gates to resign, calling his extramarital affair with an employee of the company “inappropriate”.

The newspaper cited high-ranking company sources, who confirmed that the woman worked as a computer scientist at Microsoft. She even reportedly sent a letter to the board, describing Gates’ extramarital affair with her “for years”, even asking for Melinda to be informed.

Microsoft confirmed the investigation against Gates, while the spokesperson of Bill did not deny the infidelity.

“Microsoft received a complaint in the second half of 2019 that Bill Gates was looking to have an affair with an employee of the company in 2000,” a Microsoft spokesman told the Wall Street Journal, “a board of directors considered the complaint, assisted by an independent law firm to conduct an in-depth investigation. “Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who made the complaint.”

Gates’s spokeswoman confirmed the extramarital affair in the newspaper, but denied that Bill’s resignation in 2020 had anything to do with the complaint. “It was a relationship almost 20 years ago that ended amicably,” he said, adding that Gates “He had expressed interest in spending more time on the charities he had started several years earlier.”

The image of the woman Gates being thrown at his employees was reinforced by the following revelations of the New York Times. The newspaper quoted a number of anonymous sources as claiming that Bill sexually chased several women who worked for him.

The employees even talked about two specific times when his flirtation with employees was not appropriate. Six current and former employees, however, told the newspaper that Gates was not a “predator”, but that he was creating an uncomfortable working environment.

In such an incident that has been coming to us since 2006, the Microsoft boss he emailed an employee asking her to go out for dinner. “If that makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened,” Bill wrote at the end, according to Times reporters who read it.

Several years later, Gates dropped her off at an employee of his institution during a business trip. She, speaking to the Times anonymously, said she turned down the offer, but the trip “became strange”.

An article in Quartz magazine in 2019 revealed many stories of women who have been sexually harassed within Microsoft. Maybe it was her co-founder who cultivated the toxic climate. Although the degree to which he is responsible is a question.

The even more uncomfortable relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

It was again the Wall Street Journal that revealed how Melinda Gates has been considering divorce since at least 2019. What had happened then? Her husband reappeared eager to meet convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

A story that did not start, of course, in 2019, but in 2011. Gates met the perverted stockbroker Epstein in 2011, three years after the latter was convicted of pimping a minor.

Several sources caught up with the story and investigated it, telling us that the two billionaires met several times at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan. Melinda was angry every time, steadily, and in 2019 she allegedly could not stand the relationship between them anymore.

As we remember, the Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell in August 2019. Gates stated shortly after his death that the fact that he had met him was a “wrong judgment”. The Financial Times has been gaining access to a Gates memo since 2019, where Bill writes that he “entertained Epstein’s charitable ideas.”

The icing on the cake of Melinda Gates’ anger at her husband, with reports that she is seeking a divorce, is another case of sexual harassment.

According to the Times, it was Gates’ accountant and close associate Michael Larson who was accused by one of his employees of sexual harassment in her workplace.

The Times confirms that Larson and the victim found them out of court in 2018, with her signing a confidentiality clause for the crime and he rewarding her generously with an amount that never became known.

But Melinda asked Bill to investigate the story independently, since Larson is not accidental, he is running Cascade Investment, Gates’s investment company, which manages its billions. And he is the man Gates has had by his side in their daily lives for 30 years.

Gates did not respond to a request for comment, but his spokeswoman Bridgitt Arnold denied the allegations.

“It is extremely frustrating that so many lies have been published about the cause, circumstances and timing of Bill Gates’ divorce,” he told the Times. that people who have so little knowledge of the situation are characterized as “sources”.

It is a fact that we will see many more things from Gates’ basement come to the surface as the couple tries to share their huge fortune. Other than that really and other monstrous lies, like the story with the stone of the scandal that separated the couple.

But as long as that happens, Bill Gates’s image changes one scandal at a time…

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