I don’t think you read the entire NYT article since the preceding paragraph contains this: Six current and former employees of Microsoft, the foundation and the firm that manages the Gates’s fortune said those incidents, and others more recently, at times created an uncomfortable workplace environment. Mr. Gates was known for making clumsy approaches to women in and out of the office. His behavior fueled widespread chatter among employees about his personal life.
If true, this guy has an established history of hitting on his employees. It doesn’t matter that his propositions were a fail or that no one felt he was acting “predatory.” Or that he was married (although that is an abuse as well - just a different sort from what we are discussing here). Keep in mind that the board had to investigate the one from 20 years ago. That’s what happens when the guy in charge asks out the lower rungs on the corporate ladder (which, in Bill Gates’s case, is pretty much everyone at both Microsoft and the foundation).
I think that it helps to look at the power imbalance in workplace situations.
Can one person be in a position that they could affect another employees position in the company? Also could the employee in question think that the person in power could affect their position or status?
It’s not just about if the higher level person could, but if the lower level person thinks they could also.
I don’t know how anyone could think otherwise than yes.
I worked for a company that put in a new nepotism rule in about 1990. The history of the company was that the headquarters was in a very small town in Wis but then moved to a bigger city and then to Minneapolis. When it was in the small town, and even the bigger city, everyone knew or was related to each other. Brothers, spouses, cousins, neighbors because there really weren’t a lot of other places to work. As we grew and moved, it became problematic. Yes, the wife may not have been supervised directly by her new spouse, but maybe she was supervised by someone who worked for him, or she was working on a project he was supervising. We were also a very young company (employees were young) so there was drinking after work and bowling leagues and golf outings. There were blow up on projects, there were petty problems that could become big deals.
They decided that those who were married and both worked for the company could stay that way, but in the future if two employees married, one had to quit. If the couple didn’t decide who would leave, the company would let the lower ranked employee (by grade) go, and if they were the same grade the newest hire was out. This didn’t solve the dating other employees problem, but it did make people a little more aware of the consequences.
The company was not big enough so that married (or related) employees could be moved to different divisions or some such so that one is not within the direct or indirect supervisory chain of command of the other?
However, married people may want to avoid having both spouses work at the same company in order to diversify risks associated with one particular company doing poorly.
When dh and I got engaged (1988) we were both working for one of the (at the time) Big 8 accounting firms. We received a letter stating that basically gave us permission/blessing to get married and to both be able to continue working there. Because he was only one year ahead of me in tenure and in different departments - he audit, I tax - we were not going to be in a situation where he would ever be supervising me. But, there were definitely managers who supervised staffers and dated them during that same time period. Only about three years apart. I’m sure that doesn’t happen now.
I met DH at work. He was higher up in terms of position but he had no power whatsoever relative to me. I had always intended to work there temporarily until I could get a teaching position, so after I had put in a year there, I quit to be a teacher.
The head of the company (named after him) did come on to me once. I politely rebuffed him and he acted like it never happened, was always nice after that. It’s a good thing, because he certainly had the authority to can me.
There were about 1000 employees in home office, but the majority were in smaller (4 to 50 employees) branches around the country. It was home office that was the problem. Almost all the departments worked together so if the husband was in insurance and the wife in legal, the wife wouldn’t work with the husband but I might supervise the wife in legal and work with the husband in insurance, and have the need to ask him for a project and retaliate against the wife if the husband didn’t hop to my demands.
It had become a problem because that’s why they changed the rules. When the company was very small, as I said it was a small town and everyone was related to someone in the town. It might have been a problem but if they’d had that rule, they would have have a hiring problem. When they moved (and this was about 10 years after they moved) they had a bigger hiring pool.
Exactly. Bill’s clumsy attempts at hitting on women and affairs are of zero interest to me. What else is news. Sadly, if we had to fire every man (and woman) engaging in such behavior, the corporate ranks would be severely thinned. The primary reason I follow this story because this split up might affect how one large (and very local to me) philanthropic organization could be run in the future. BTW, Bill is not looking very good in the recent photos, so I also worry if his health is in decline… hope there are contingency plans for who will be running the Foundation if Melinda is pushed out of it.
Interest is what goes along with celebrity status. Bill and Melinda have it so they get it. Not easy to have one without the other.
And to a certain degree, I think there is an appeal to seeing people with a lot of money having problems. Some people (who think that their lives would be perfect/problems go away) feel better if they see that isn’t the case for people with more money than they could ever spend. Similar appeal for many with soap operas.
Bill and Melinda’s divorce is about as important to the advancement of human kind as is Harry and Meaghan’s decision to step back from royal duties. Both events the subject of a major announcement and major news coverage, and apparently too much of a temptation for CC’ers to refrain from creating a thread and gossiping about it.
The friendship with Jeffrey Epstein is certainly news in that it exposes how well connected people like Epstein and his highly placed friends got away with criminal behavior for so many years.
Is it any of my business? Absolutely not. They’ve asked for privacy, and deserve that decency. Unfortunately, they are so high profile, the request for privacy leaves a gaping hole that the news media (and we) rush to fill.
I really thought they were a power couple that was making it work, and saddened by the announcement.
I was especially impressed with Melinda Gates, and even more so after reading her book last year. I appreciated her honesty in discussing the dilemma of the power differences, and how she was able to grow within it. What lesson can this share for other strong women married to strong men? These marriages are not all doomed of course, but I really want to better understand the continued social pressures that contribute to the difficulties, and what can be done about those pressures.
I heard a brief note on the radio about Microsoft being a toxic workplace when Gates was there. That he was known to grope women employees! That is certainly newsworthy.