Considering the high-profile nature of their partnership <i>as it pertains to the Gates Foundation</i> as well as potential down-stream impacts e.g potentially around which projects are picked up by the foundation, strategic philanthropic decisions, etc., this post would seem to be pretty relevant to the HN community.<p>Please stop flagging it.<p>Feel free to downvote me for complaining about the flags, but don't flag the post. No, I'm not OP.
Until we get some other news, I’ll just assume this is a case where sometimes two people were great together at one point in their lives aren’t at another. This happened to my parents when my sister and I were both out of the house, they realized they weren’t the same two people they were decades before. Thankfully, they’re both very cordial with one another and both happily remarried.<p>I have doubts this means anything negative for the foundation, other than maybe a rebrand of the name. I live in Seattle and have a few friends who work there - While both Gates are active in the spectacle of the foundation and pushing the broader mission, neither touch day-to-day operations at all.
Given what happened in Jeff Bezos's divorce, this has massive implications for everyone beyond relationship drama. (e.g. control of the Gates Foundation / philanthropy contributions)
Why does this story keep getting flagged on HN? As multiple people have pointed out, regardless of the personal issues in question, this affects a large number of people (such as those at the Gates Foundation).
This has far reaching consequences for a lot of people on HN, please stop flagging it, the only result that has is that it gets submitted over and over again drowning out just about every submission to the new page.
People change over time. Sometimes that means you stay in a relationship because family-wise (raising children) or financially it makes sense or the alternatives are painful.<p>Seems like none of these are at play. Best of luck to Bill and Melinda.<p>I will never forgive BillG for his cutthroat and ruthless actions as Microsoft CEO given he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. None of his "charitable" actions will clear his record.
A separation at this level reverberates across many levels as it will effect the lives of thousands of people. Makes me very curious as to what exactly happened.
Given the Gateses' roles in the tech world, venture funding, philanthropy, and Big Problems (scroll through BG's Twitter feed for numerous recent examples), including malaria, fresh water, sanitation, COVID-19, nuclear power, carbon emissions, global warming, disinformation, and more, the adjacency to numerous topics highly relevant to HN are high.<p>I say this as a very long-time critic of Microsoft and Gates, including on recent issues (patents as applied to vaccines).
Why is everyone getting triggered by the story of divorce? A lot of unhappy relationships out there? This is highly relevant article. this power couple Microsoft founder I mean his actions and life trajectory are deeply intetlinked with the history and future of technology on Earth this is extremely relevant article, and historical moment. As much as some naive commenters here would seem to like to assume a divorce does not just affect the people involved especially in this case massive flows of capital are going to alter as a result.
Bill accumulated most of his wealth before the marriage AFAICT, so that should make things go pretty smoothly. There is the notion that he will have to continue to provide her with the standard of living established during the marriage, so he could be on the hook for substantial alimony or a one time payment to buy her out.