Originally published at: Bill Gates resigned from Microsoft board during investigation into affair with employee | Boing Boing
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There’s a longer report in the New York Times regarding his history of problematic attempts to hit on women he worked with (and let’s not forget, his soon-to-be-divorced-from wife was also an employee).
I could say more, but I’m on the edge of falling into a long rant about toxic workplaces masked under these concepts of “community” and “belonging” that so many are pushing as reasons to kill off work from home and force everyone back into their cubicles. So I’ll stop there.
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Maybe the nanochip in vaccines was so Melinda Gates could keep track of Bill?
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Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid that after fucking around on his wife with a subordinate employee, they may not have ended up besties.
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Patiently waiting for all the female CEO’s of famous large tech companies to get unmasked as serial predators.
checks watch…
still waiting.
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I think it says something about Gates that he was such a champion of the screwed up Stack Ranking evaluation system, which notoriously insulated the top echelon – no way was Nathan Myhrvold going to have his work quantified. Rules strictly enforced on the masses never applied to his version of the elite, including himself, of course.
Management requirements enorforcing togetherness in the office never apply to execs anywhere, either. They need to have special allowances for creative down time or whatever they call it, and the freedom to go on junkets as brand ambassadors or some similar word salad. It’s self evident to them that two sets of rules are needed.
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$$$$,$$$!
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I work for GE under Welch when stack ranking was all the rage and even though I highly benefitted from it (being on the top end) I still hated it. I was treated like an absolute king but also had to fire people I would have cut off an arm to have work for me in other companies.
I hate it’s still a thing. My current company does it, but covers it in 20 layers of candy coating to pretend they aren’t.
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I can’t agree more. The need to force people to spend more time at work than with their own friends and family is a big reason why work can be sooooo dysfunctional. The idea of a “work family” has honestly been used too many times to keep me tied to crap jobs and put me in too many awkward sexual harassment-y predicaments. Now I know to treat the idea of “work family” as an early warning sign that the employer is horrible and to doesn’t have there shit together.
The idea that my co-workers are somehow equivalent to my actual family is repugnant and frankly a bit sad. I too wish they would stop trying to force-feed us this BS just so we can justify working weekends or late nights etc. I just want to get the work done and go home to my real family.
That’s exactly how you get someone to start thinking it’s ok to start flirting or whatever at work and you end up with the “work spouse” title. Nope, just no!
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Speaking of corporate word salad:
Microsoft received a concern
THIS IS NOT ENGLISH. “Received a complaint,” yes. “Voiced a concern,” ugh, but ok. “Heard a concern,” well maybe, but obviously too mild. “Heard an accusation” is probably what happened.
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“Bill Gates stepped down from the board of Microsoft last year to spend more time with his philanthropy philandering.”
FTFY
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The only work family is a family that by chance works in the same place. Normally are farmers, but sometime are small shops or tiny factories, not a Fortune 500 company.
At least in a farm you can use your nose to find you’re doing a crap job. But at least afterward the field is fertilized.
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I worked at Microsoft for four years, but I’d never heard the term “stack ranking” until I took a job at another company where it was popular to bash Microsoft.
I’m not saying stack ranking didn’t exist or that it was OK. I just find it weird that I was someone completely in the dark about this widely-hated system I was subjected to.
Depends on when you worked there. It was early under Ballmer and it wasn’t very fruitful.
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Every publicly debated failed marriage focuses on that thing he couldn’t turn off and never what she can comfortably turn off for years on end.
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This kind of nonsense is commonplace with Japanese companies. Where there is coerced/enforced socialization after work and a culture of shaming/attacking employees for taking personal time or leaving at normal hours. Japanese workers may stay late, but rarely is quality work ever produced during such hours. It is more of a way of managers imposing on their workers for shits and giggles.
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I wonder if this’ll be a chapter in any future Gates bio:
Little St. James Island
That’s what happens when you name your company Microsoft. You spend the rest of your life overcompensating for it.
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I guess they never realize how many talented introverts they either drive away or make their lives miserable. Or maybe they do, but figure they can shoot a foot off and still win the marathon.
There were signs.
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