Also stepped down from the Berkshire board as well.
Given that he stepped away from a day to day role in 2008 and then stepped down as the chairman in 2014, I'm guessing he's focusing on his foundation.
He's still the 8th largest shareholder according to Bloomberg's records(103,000,000 share), which is pretty impressive given that the 7 entities above him are all funds.
Incase you wanted to know who the remaining 12 board members are:
With Gates’ departure, the Board will consist of 12 members, including John W. Thompson, Microsoft independent chair; Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock Partners; Hugh Johnston, vice chairman and chief financial officer of PepsiCo; Teri L. List-Stoll, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Gap, Inc.; Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft; Sandra E. Peterson, operating partner, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; Penny Pritzker, founder and chairman, PSP Partners; Charles W. Scharf, chief executive officer and president of Wells Fargo & Co.; Arne Sorenson, president and CEO, Marriott International Inc.; John W. Stanton, chairman of Trilogy Equity Partners; Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK); and Padmasree Warrior, founder, CEO and president, Fable Group Inc.
Most of the board members seem to be partners at various investment firms. Many of them don't seem to even remotely tech people. It's kind of sad that the Microsoft board lacks any external visionaries.
It actually makes a lot of sense. Technical people sometimes think that the higher up you go the bigger the decisions, but normally decision making peters off around the Director level. Above that and it's really about how to keep the company going as a company, or in other words the business of maintaining a structure of people that continues to survive within the regulatory context that the company operates within. And for a large multinational company like Microsoft, that's an enormously big deal. You're generally lucky if the CEO has any technical capabilities at all.
Yes, very much this. As a VP my responsibilities largely revolve around budgeting, org structure and corporate politics. I take the advice of my directors on pretty much everything (and they mostly listen to their managers & engineers), because they and their direct reports are better informed than my responsibilities allow me to be. My involvement in technical decisions is largely limited to testing their decision-making process and the political issues that impact that decision.
I do know how the stuff works in general, but my technical skills are probably a decade out of date because I've spent that time working up the management ladder and learning those skills instead. But management is more about being able to organize a group of people to do a task, not doing the task yourself.
i don't think that was a wise decision: as a result of the spyware scourge the concept of native apps in windows is dead and you need a web based app for about anything.
At a huge company like Microsoft the board isn't really a great place for visionaries. It's much better at things like helping the CEO understand the thoughts of large institutional investors that provide Microsoft with capital. A visionary is better suited as a "special advisor" to someone... like the role that Bill Gates is keeping.
With cash on hand of around $140 billion, I'm not sure Microsoft really needs to worry about outside capital. I would think the board could help with how to keep those big companies paying for everyone to have the full Microsoft Office suite and how to custom price it.
They still care about share price, which depends on outside investors willing to buy the shares, which depends on MS having good IR, which some of the board members help with.
At the same time, if the function of the board is to keep the ship from drifting too far off course, or to handle certain problems the company itself seems incapable of or oblivious to (mass cognitive dissonance) it could be useful to have a Jobsesque pitchman who can get a board to be accepting of radical risk taking. A board might lean conservative and risk averse, and sometimes companies need moments of extreme risk. Usually that jump takes a persuader.
Being able to sit in on board meetings, and talk during them would be enough, not necessarily having a vote, maybe thats a special adviser?
> Being able to sit in on board meetings, and talk during them would be enough, not necessarily having a vote, maybe thats a special adviser?
Big multinationals typically have advisory boards / subcommittees that advise them on certain topics. I assume Microsoft has a technology advisory board (and in their case, likely several) that includes at least some high-level engineering talent.
Leadership at the board level involves high level decision-making, but not a lot of actual work. The CFO of PepsiCo has a ton of responsibilities himself; his position on the board of Microsoft is likely only a few hours a month because it's limited to reading reports prepped by the C-suite and its advisors, then voting on decisions. Senior executives and investors are chosen for boards because their day jobs require an understanding of market context and a good bullshit filter to guard against the Jobsesque pitchman scenario.
Big strategy shifts, or attempts, like buying Nokia, would go through the board of most companies. If the entire board is conservative investors without vision for pivot and reinvention, your company will slowly stagnate. Ideally you can identify and make those moves before youve become surpassed.
IBM purging its hardware divisions, and then buying Red Hat is another example, where a company maybe waited a little too long between moves. Would a more aggressive board pushed the company to do that earlier?
No. Governance squarely lies with CEO and fiduciary responsibility with CFO. Board is supposed to look at these but they are not responsible for it (i.e. Enron board members don't go to jail for fraud but CEO and CFO may). The board does not exist just for administrative purposes. At all time, senior leadership need to behave so that they have confidence of board members. In return, board members are supposed to advice on investments company is making or not making, competative landscape, internal struggles, big problems, earnings expectations etc.
I think this is related to the fact that Microsoft announced a deal few years back that any entity with more than 4% stock ownership automatically gets right to have a seat on the board. During those times, stock was struggling and this might have been strategy to pull some investors who wants to have control as well. In my personal opinion, this was quite unfortunate because such strategies usually invites "activist" investors types. These types are rarely good for long term future of the company as they often enforce short term strategy such as massive buy backs, dividents etc to prop up the stock while actively prevent large capex needed to go after long term big bets.
Board members aren't there to invent the next iPhone, they're there to determine when the CEO should be fired, and to hire a new CEO when necessary. Right now, the Microsoft board is particularly pointless since Satya Nadella is one of the highest-performing CEOs in the world and isn't close to retirement.
The board is meant to represent the investors and act as a check on the power of top executives so they don't go rogue and act contrary to the investors interests. Their job is certainly easier when the CEO is strong and things are going well, but it's still an important role.
Often the CFO (and sometimes other C-level officers) will also report directly to the board, or at least have a direct line of communication that the CEO isn't allowed to interfere with.
That's not how it works. When CEO wants to take on big bet, he will typically need board approval. You can imagine Steve Jobs standing in board room and presenting costs and promise of iPhone. If your board is all classic investor suits then they might not see through things. They can move to prevent CEO from spending big money because that would reflect in reduced earnings because of higher capex. I think this is one reason Google gets away with far larger R&D capex than Microsoft because their board has real tech folks and ex-founders.
>Kind of odd, being an employee there, I've never heard of eleven of the twelve board members before.
This is the preferred employee experience.
A large employer is usually more comfortable having executives of other corporations being more familiar with board members compared to its own employees.
They do. In a healthy company board is a sort of dampening force that steers CEO away from bad moves and advice him/her so that opportunities are not missed. Elizabeth Holms would be at much better place if board had excercised its authority. They are legally required to be part of almost all big decisions that are being made and they have the authority to at least bring in stockholder vote if they lose confidence in CEO.
I think what they meant was that the board does not usually interact a lot with employees, or in a directly employee-facing way. Usually directors will interact with the board, both in terms of informing them and soliciting advice, and that turns into company direction, which funnels down through multiple layers before getting to ICs.
Few people can have more impact on the company than a board, but it's very typically abstracted away.
Marriott is a typical example of the type of large corporate customers who buy a lot of Microsoft products and services. Having customers on the board is one way to help validate market strategy and gain insight into future IT purchasing trends.
Boards serve in part to guide networking and policy for executives, and some are required to be external. It makes complete sense to have executives from other large corporations like Marriott.
Marriott doesn't seem to stand out as any further away from software than any of the other board members, so maybe I'm not understanding your question; what about Marriott specifically caught your eye?
He would probably like to know why it makes sense to hire these external heads. If you were talking about the most outlandish of these board members, why would you say they deserve to be on the board? (I'm genuinely asking here as I don't know why myself)
Boards are required, and there are different kinds of board members, some of them are are appointed and/or voted in by shareholders. So it's not exactly a question of being "deserving". While Microsoft is probably going to have some sway, this process is not necessarily about Microsoft picking people to guide their development strategy, or picking people who are in their best interests. This is sometimes shareholders putting in people who can (among other things) - 1) oversee the corporate governance, make sure the company is playing fair with their stock, 2) put in people who are successful and can guide the company toward business success, 3) create a network for hiring & replacing executives when they leave for any reason. That said, having diverse input from other large businesses seems like it's always going to be an advantage.
I doubt it has anything to do with travel trends anymore than GSk being there has anything to do with pharma. These are business executives whose specific domain of expertise is business, not travel or pharma or banking, etc.
Yes, but probably quite incompetently. And the Marriott board member probably knows how to make mediocre cup of coffee with the machine in their hotel room, but would be insulted if you asked them to make you a cup. But Microsoft has other experts who are competent to speak about those things (both enterprise software and good coffee), fortunately.
As a software giant Microsoft's products intersect most parts of most economies. A hotel chain has its own technology needs and has views of the technology needs of its customers.
Whether a high-placed member of Marriott has specific insights to Microsoft I don't know, but I don't think it takes much imagination to fill in hypothetical reasons the person could be helpful.
You often see people sitting on boards from entirely different industries. One reason might be having a entirely different perspective on your business. When you have a board that entirely from the same sector, you end up with a lot of group think.
> He's still the 8th largest shareholder according to Bloomberg's records(103,000,000 share), which is pretty impressive given that the 7 entities above him are all funds.
Steve Ballmer has a far larger position in Microsoft than Gates does. Ballmer has $52.9 billion in Microsoft stock presently (333m shares), per Bloomberg. A little over three times that of Gates.
Ballmer appears to be the third largest holder, behind Blackrock (which has 515m shares).
If my understanding is not wrong, board members are representing shareholders and they themself are also share-holders.
So, is Pepsi Cola, Gap Jeans, GSK (Sensodyne) & Marriott Hotel (just the household brands I recognised) shareholders of Microsoft or are the people Shareholders of Microsoft and their day job is at those companies?
I would guess that Bill Gates has been looking to do this for a while now, and this is just a good time PR-wise. It won't tank the stock anymore than it already has because the market's crashing, and people have other stuff to worry about.
His foundation has also been fairly active in the response to COVID-19 ($100M spending commitment so far), I wonder if he'll be taking a more direct role in the foundation's response to it: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/TheOptimist/coronavirus
Eh, I honestly don't think he has to care how much any news would marginally affect the stock or not. Unless he actually cares if he or Bezos is the #1 wealthiest person -- both being anyways astronomically rich at the end of the day.
I didn't in fact even know he still had a role in Microsoft. My understanding was first Ballmer and then Nadella took over running the show years ago. So I don't think it's not even going to to affect investor sentiment that much.
He hasn't been involved in the day-to-day for so long that it wouldn't matter much. Once it was clear Satya Nadella had righted the ship, Bill was free to step away. It only looks bad if he starts selling shares quickly.
Right, but this isn't just some random guy jumping ship. He's been winding down his role in the company for over a decade and there's a really obvious reason to step down: The stock market crash makes this an important time for Microsoft to have leadership that can actually support the company and Bill Gates' other job is incredibly active in the response to coronavirus. It's very likely that the reason he's stepping down has nothing to do with burying the news at all, it's to do with the fact he actually has limited time and this is a very important time to focus his efforts.
Much better when you have a pandemic going on. A friend of mine who is a CFO told me this sort of thing is used by CFOs in all companies to "clean the balance sheets" of bad news. Basically writing off things and taking losses with the excuse "the <name> disaster has really hit us hard but we expect to emerge stronger than ever."
The reason for this strategy is that it is difficult for an aggravated shareholder to prove that the thing they are writing off was their fault. It is a giant get out of jail free card for contradicting any previous guidance or other statements simply "because disaster."
As a result, the statements from companies on their Q1 results will be a lot of "we've been hit hard by this disaster" and they will dump a lot of things off their balance sheets that they should have dumped off prior to this, take a hit in their stock price but no one will be "guilty" of causing the stock price hit, "because disaster."
Satya Nadella is doing a terrific job leading Microsoft. Prior to his taking over, Microsoft was seen as a has-been. Today Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world once again (edit: AAPL is slightly ahead).
Nevertheless, this is a sad day. If anyone has the ability--and credibility--to provide guidance to Nadella it is Bill Gates. With Gates gone (and Ballmer too) it is Nadella's Microsoft. That's not bad necessarily, but having Gates around as a backup was a good thing.
This is the end of an era. I can only imagine what those board meetings are like. If anything like his product reviews, he asked incisive, aggressive questions.
I hope he left because he is satisfied with the job the rest of the board is doing. Yes, Microsoft caused a lot of damage during the monopoly days. The tech industry needs a healthy, competitive Microsoft - at the very least to keep a check on other companies.
It seems like he's laser-focused on global health at the B&MGF with some occasional videos about books, tech and trends. Corporate governance may seem to him less interesting at this stage.
Not sure he'd be the most qualified, but he seems like a person who take advice from knowledgeable people well and has the experience and current position of leadership to take advantage of it. He also lives right near a huge local outbreak, and so has obvious personal incentive to make sure that it gets cleaned up ASAP.
But he came into that position because he's rich, not because of any particular expertise, and he's been able to accomplish more than others for that same reason. He's done a lot of good, but there is not really any oversight into what his foundation does and no reason to believe he's doing the best possible job. He's just pouring a ton of money into a lot of very hard problems.
If I had to pick someone, I would probably go with the guy who's already done this exact job less than two years ago and has experience with both global health and government service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Timothy_Ziemer
> He's just pouring a ton of money into a lot of very hard problems.
To expand on this, those problems take a lot of money to deal with, more than his foundation has, so in a lot of cases, the foundation effectively acts as force multiplier to get even more money on the problems.
> But he came into that position because he's rich, not because of any particular expertise
Except Gates is rich precisely because of expertise and talent. Without a doubt he's one of the best managers alive. Doubly so when those organizations are operating in complex, technically challenging, domains like software or epidemology.
To be completely serious, no it doesn't.
I do not see an appointment of someone who is clearly both richer and smarter to be the frontman of the largest crisis to hit the country in recent history.
During a local non-profit board election I once voted in, one of the candidates' position statements was a single sentence: I may not have a lot skills, but I'm really good at writing checks.
He has experience and credibility in the field and could bring widespread attention to a clear plan to tackle the problem. Everybody already knows what needs to be done to slow down the pandemic, but there needs to be swift and strong political leadership to make it happen.
Maybe not the (emphasis) but his foundation is doing a tremendous amount of work in medicine and disease. He has a lot of knowledge, experience and contacts to set something up.
1. Bill Gates is extremely competitive, he's a bulldog, he fights and wants to win against whatever. He built Microsoft into a Monopoly and is fighting hard (and doing a great job) against diseases.
2. Bill Gates looks at problems logically, finds missing links, and solves those links. Whether that is refrigeration for vaccines, getting useful data for diseases, etc.
3. Bill Gates knows a ton about diseases, epidemics, etc. He's super curious and doesn't stop learning.
Why? Being an MD isn't a huge deal in these cases. Not to say that having knowledge of the fundamentals of biology or healthcare isn't useful, but managing thousands of people, complex human systems, mass organizations, and building a plan to eliminate a disease is not something they teach in medical school.
Gates has done more to battle malaria and other diseases than anyone currently alive. His track record is second to none, in terms of building a huge strategy, managing complex systems, and executing a pragmatic plan. And I suspect he has many MDs in his close circle of advisers who he relies on. A leader doesn't need to be a specialist -- they need to be a leader, a generalist, and rely on a team for specialist knowledge.
MDs are good at treating patients, but they're not necessarily good at leading people.
Good leaders know how to draw on the expertise of others to organize a coordinated response... which the Gates Foundation has proved themselves very capable of doing, particularly with public health issues. The Gates Foundation employs lots of healthcare professionals.
I'd highly suggest looking up some of the talks Gates has done about his work with his foundation. He definitely has his shit together.
Doctors are people who are trained and have experience diagnosing and treating individual patients. I'm not sure why those skills are necessary for fighting an epidemic?
The person in charge of the epidemic will not be doing patient diagnosis and care. The person will be doing some aspects of: Logistics, managing a ton of people, political wrangling, PR/media relations, setting and achieving organizational goals.
Of course some disease and medical knowledge will be required, but not being an MD doesn't seem relevant.
It's always mostly about business/decision making, once you surround yourself with competent people who you can trust - you don't need to be a world-class expert.
He'd obviously consult top doctors. Why would a doctor be better at organizing a large response than a proven business leader who pivoted to disease control?
He's self-made and wealthy because of his qualities and capabilities. That's what people admire. There's no denying that Bill Gates is one of the best executives ever.
I'm pretty sure Bill Gates is worshipped for more than his wealth. Growing up, he was the stereotypical wunderkind and people would say about smart kids "going to be the next Bill Gates". Come on, I was there to type in Microserf and M$ when Microsoft was fucking everyone with the SCO bullshit. That was infuriating, as was all the crap around FAT and NTFS. But you rarely find the combo of technologist and smart businessman.
For all the crap he did, ultimately the Gates Foundation is awesome and it's set up in such a way that it doesn't last forever. All reasons to admire the fellow.
I attended a party at his house with a group of interns. He was worshipped, but in the wrong way -- a number of people wanted to touch his clothing or get his autograph, and they were employees.
I don't think he was ever comfortable with that, and this allows him and his wife to work on interesting problems without causing political problems for MSFT.
I mean, it is pretty diverse for a corporate board. About a third women, couple people of color including the CEO and chairman. That's well ahead of the curve.
Somewhat diverse by race and gender. Completely non-diverse in terms of socioeconomic status, which may have been
jayzalowitz's point. (Or may not. Maybe there wasn't a point except some drive-by snark. It's hard to tell with a post like that.)
By definition it's not going to be diverse for the economically part of socioeconomic since no matter where people began if they're on Microsoft's board they're doing quite well. In terms of where they began, looking up a few of them real quick, a couple of them are immigrants, a few of them (including the chairman) seem to have gone to public high schools and or universities. I won't deny that most of them didn't start out with head starts, and of course all of them are 1%ers now probably by board pay alone, but this isn't a super homogeneous board, especially compared to the rest of corporate america
Well, there's 29 German companies in the Fortune 500, and all of them are required to have half of the board be elected by the workers, so I imagine some of them should have socioeconomic diversity.
I think economically they'll have boards with people that started out at different points in life, probably vastly skewed towards people that had head start of some form or another, and you can probably tease apart economic diversity through figuring out where people started. In terms of in the present day though, the pay for being on the board is alone enough to knock these members into the 1%, and by definition they've succeeded in the current system, so I don't know if it's physically possible to have that sort of diversity
There's 12 people. To be honest, you can always construct a set of characteristics that are under-represented in such a group. Go ahead and pick 12 people and I'll pick the characteristics that aren't represented in proportion.
It would be unexpected for them to be perfectly represented. Even with large external pressures to be representative any variation means you get the most average person paradox where having a board perfectly representative is less likely than having nonrepresentative characteristics
Is anyone actually advocating for diversity of socioeconomic status on boards? Board members need to be highly skilled and experienced in business, which I would guess correlates very well with wealth.
Place your quota of women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, LBGT minorities, disabilities and the rest and you end up with a board where the best potential candidates based on skill are excluded.
Skill directed in a manner hostile to one's interest is a harm, not a benefit, so arguing that representing interests that the current elite is hostile to on boards would limit their skill isn't really a negative for the purpose for which the diversity push is made.
Bill Gates got his start at Micro-Soft coding BASIC dev stacks for the microcomputers of his day-- and Microsoft has now announced that further development on Visual Basic is to be frozen indefinitely (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22570684 - "Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language"). There's no way that this is mere coincidence.
> Bill Gates stepped down from the company's Board of Directors to dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities including global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change.
If you follow Bill Gates at all, you'll understand this is where all of his energy, and passion, have been going for a long while now.
Do you really think his ego is that Trumpian that he's throwing a tantrum over something he made 45 years ago?
If I were him I'd be grateful that that piece of software began my path to billions and billions of dollars, but I wouldn't be angry about something not really used anymore being classified obsolete.
Given that he stepped away from a day to day role in 2008 and then stepped down as the chairman in 2014, I'm guessing he's focusing on his foundation.
He's still the 8th largest shareholder according to Bloomberg's records(103,000,000 share), which is pretty impressive given that the 7 entities above him are all funds.
Incase you wanted to know who the remaining 12 board members are:
With Gates’ departure, the Board will consist of 12 members, including John W. Thompson, Microsoft independent chair; Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock Partners; Hugh Johnston, vice chairman and chief financial officer of PepsiCo; Teri L. List-Stoll, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Gap, Inc.; Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft; Sandra E. Peterson, operating partner, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; Penny Pritzker, founder and chairman, PSP Partners; Charles W. Scharf, chief executive officer and president of Wells Fargo & Co.; Arne Sorenson, president and CEO, Marriott International Inc.; John W. Stanton, chairman of Trilogy Equity Partners; Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK); and Padmasree Warrior, founder, CEO and president, Fable Group Inc.