Big Technology Podcast - She Advocated For Women, Then Microsoft Pushed Her Off Its Board — With Maria Klawe

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

“Are you trying to fucking destroy the company?” That’s what Bill Gates told Microsoft board member Maria Klawe when she asked why Microsoft wouldn’t consider a single women out of 50 candidates it was evaluating to replace then-CEO Steve Ballmer. When Microsoft settled on Satya Nadella, he later joined Klawe at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing and told her that instead of asking for a raise, women should just have faith in the system to get it right. The incident caused an uproar, and Nadella apologized and promised to do better. One year later, Microsoft’s board pushed Klawe out, telling her it was looking for more “conventional” women in business. Klawe joins Big Technology Podcast to tell the full, shocking, uncut story.  The BI story: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-director-maria-klawe-satya-nadella-raises-gaffe-karma-2021-5 Always Day One: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V65YKZT

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is a very special guest. She's a computer scientist, the president of Harvey Mudd College, and a former Microsoft board member who's agreed to come on and speak with us about her experiences. Maria Klave, welcome to the show. Oh, my pleasure. It's great to have you. I've been following your career for a while, and you've been involved in some really interesting moments in tech, and I can't express how grateful I am to have you here on the show.

So thank you for joining us. So usually with the interviews that we do, I like to kind of, you know, we go in with like a soft takeoff and then maybe we get to the more intense stuff, but sorry, I think we have to just start with the more intense stuff right off the bat because I read this business insider article that, you know, quoted you about your time at Microsoft and my eyes kind of dropped out of my head after having read some of the details in there. So for folks who are just, you know, coming into this story, you had hosted or had interviewed Saty in Adela in 2014. And the issue, and it was an event for women about women in the tech world. And this issue,

came up where, I mean, I'm going to let you tell the story. But I'll just start it off and then you can go from there. But this issue came up where you asked Sallya a very fair question, which apparently had the question in advance, which was when if a woman wants a raise in the workplace, how do they bring it up? Very simple question. So how did, and it turned into a bit of an issue. So take us from there. How did Sanya answer that? And why did they get them into trouble? Well, the first thing is that it was the last question in the interview. It was an hour-long fireside chat at the Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing. And I think one of the things was that Satcha was used to interacting with me in my persona at the Microsoft Board meetings.

And I had learned to be fairly quiet there. Just because when I spoke up, I would often get sort of – trounced by Bill Cates or somebody else. What do you mean trounced, by the way? Well, yelled at for asking what seemed like a straightforward question and being asked if I was trying to destroy the company. Really? Yeah.

Isn't the purpose, sorry, we're already going off track, but isn't the purpose of the board to sort of press management in a way that they might not be getting, you know, within the rest of the company? But this would happen whenever I'd ask about a technology, of diversity in the tech company. So Bill Gates wasn't here in that. Right. So he was not interested in that. But in any case, Satya had agreed to do this. It was about, I think about nine months into his time or maybe eight months into his time as CEO. And I thought very highly of Satya. I still do. And I was really delight that he agreed to let me interview him. And he actually asked that

the women employees at Microsoft from around the world be allowed to suggest the questions. And so he had, he, of those suggested questions, he picked the ones that he wanted to answer and gave me the list. And this was the last tricks. Yes. So this was the last one on the list. They were all good questions. But the thing about this was that I'm a pretty goofy person at Grace Hopper, like I'm, and I think Sartre just was surprised by the way I was. And as a result, he was, I think got a little bit more relaxed than he normally would have been. And so when I asked this question, which was, if you wanted a pay raise, what would your advice?

If a woman wanted to pay raise at Microsoft, what would your advice be? And his response was something on the order of, it's good karma just to let the system take care of it. So you shouldn't ask. Yeah, I have the exact quote. It's not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise, which, I mean, you push back, you know, very appropriately because if you trusted the system, you wouldn't have to ask that question. Yeah. And also, I mean, there's sort of two things about asking for a raise. And I will just say, as I probably said, actually at the interview, I'm not very good at asking for raises myself.

I've gotten better over the years. But one thing I've learned is it's important to practice making the ask with somebody you're comfortable with so that you're not all nervous. And secondly, it's important to have your data and have an idea of what a competitive salary would be and be able to pitch it as a win for both the company and for you. And so that's what I said. And that particular part of the interview went viral instantly. And Satya immediately after the interview, he sent a message to every Microsoft employee, apologizing for getting the answer wrong

and saying that Maria had it right. And then, you know, I saw him later on in the afternoon and talked to him about it. And by the next day, what he said was he was going to go back to Microsoft, and he was going to take some courses on diversity and inclusion. And he was going to make sure the rest of the senior team did as well, because if he could get that wrong, maybe others could as well. And I think he was completely right there. Yeah. He's called it like one of the most important moments for him in Microsoft.

I think obviously it sort of opened his eyes to wear his blind spot. might have been, which as a leader to see your blind spot and then learn is a good quality. And I can't tell you how many people both inside Microsoft and outside Microsoft told me how much they admired the fact that he admitted he got it wrong and the fact that he took a lot of steps thereafter to really try and improve diversity and inclusion kind of things at Microsoft. And, you know, I heard for the next three years or so from women at Microsoft, oh, my good things are so much better. So I thought it was a very big scandal for him, you know, early going.

I don't think scandal is the right word. I think it's more like this was a really good learning opportunity where he really, he displayed that as a CEO he could learn. And I heard so many good, so many comments from so many people around the world about how impressed they were with how he handled it. So I didn't think of it as a scandal at all. Maybe I should rephrase that a little bit. I think it was a bit of a PR snafu because the next day, you know, I was researching before this conversation and every major network carried it as we were trying to figure out who's this Satya Nadella, who's taking over the story tech company. That was one of the big first impressions that he made. And even before the networks could pronounce his name, they were talking about this. But you're right. Definitely a learning moment. Well, I did 15 news interviews the next day.

Initially, Microsoft had asked me not to talk to reporters, and then they decided it would be better if I did talk to reporters. And so we agreed on what the message would be, which was entirely what I believe, which is he made a mistake. People make mistakes. He corrected it. He's going to make sure that things are actually better.

or in terms of women and other underrepresented groups of Microsoft in the future? So, and that was the initial story, and I think that's largely what's been talked about up until recently. And then, again, this is this business insider story that just came out by Ashley Stewart came out in May, where you talked a little bit more about what happened in the aftermath. So, you know, the timing's interesting, right? So this conversation happens in October 2014, October 2015, you announced that you're leaving the board. What happened in the year in between? Well, the chair of the board was John Thompson.

He became chair of the board when Satya became the CEO. And he told me very directly that he was very upset that I had, number one, invited Satya to do that interview, and number two corrected him when he made him. gave the wrong answer. And I told him that I, and he felt that I'd hurt the reputation of Microsoft by doing that. And I argued bad that as far as I was concerned, Satya was the first CEO of Microsoft to be interviewed on the main stage at Grace Hopper. He was very happy to do it.

He did a great job, except for that one answer. And that the way he'd handled it had actually helped Microsoft, soft research reputation enormously as a result, and that there was no reason I completely disagreed with John that this was something that hurt the company. Yeah, and it's interesting because, you know, I mean, John might be, might have looked at it as PR crisis, but ultimately a board is there to make the company better. Yeah. And you would imagine this was one of those key moments that's going to make the company better.

Well, that's what I thought, but it definitely wasn't what John thought. Right. And so I'm curious, like, do you, well, I'm curious who you think he was looking out for, you know, and when he came to you with that pushback. And then if you could share a little more about what happened after that. Well, I think he thought he was looking out for the company. I think he just disagreed with me and with many others about the impact on Microsoft of that having happened. And, you know, essentially he came to see me at the September. so a little bit less than a year afterwards to tell me that he was going to ask me to leave the board, that he wanted to have more, quote, unquote, conventional women on the board who weren't as outspoken. Is that what, I mean, in his words, conventional, that's unbelievable. Yes, conventional business women.

And, you know, he had two, he wanted to replace me with two women, which he thought would me, and one of them was a woman of color. He thought that would make me very happy. And, you know, at the time, I felt I had two possibilities. One is I could object and I could have gone to the media at that point. And the other one is I could try to find a way to work through it more smoothly. And at the time, I will say I was tremendously upset. Yeah, describe how it felt because that's...

Oh, I felt completely silenced and... dismissed. I mean, I just felt I had put a lot of effort into Microsoft. I really loved the company. And I just felt that I had actually helped the company by doing this interview with Satya. And I just felt really, I don't know, what the dist, I guess, dismissed, disregarded all of those kinds of things. So it was interesting. My daughter had, who does peace negotiations, currently for the United Nations in Syria. And she talked to me about it before I actually had the meeting with John. He'd announced that he wanted to come see me in person and had set a date maybe a week to 10 days. And I knew what he was going to say. And because,

there's just no way he would have come to visit me in person unless he was going to ask me to leave the board. And so I talked to my daughter about it, and she took me through this negotiation strategy, which she did her law degree at Harvard and had done a lot of negotiation work. And as a result, I came up with a reason that I would want. to leave the board. And because I thought that it would be more diplomatic and more professional to simply say that I was going to be asking Bill Gates for a major gift. And there would be a conflict if I were to do that while I was still on the board. And so, in fact, my meeting with John Thompson was extremely cordial. And it is true that I was hoping to ask,

Bill for a $20 million gift for a new computer science building we were going to build. And it sort of sounded as though Bill was leaning towards doing that. In the end, he gave us one million, which was a huge disappointment. The building is now built. It's totally gorgeous. It's called the Scott McGregor Center. And it is one of the most beautiful computer science buildings I've seen in my career. But in any case, I had chosen this particular route. And, you know, I think part of what happened in the time, you know, so you might ask, well, you know, why would I, why would I actually talk about it now? And I think part of it is there were a lot of things at the time I wouldn't, that I found really quite distasteful about my experiences of being on the Microsoft board. And one of them was, you know, certainly the way that Bill treated any, any question about, so the, you know, the way this came up was there was a, at one of my early meetings, maybe in my first board meeting, there was a list of 50 people on the succession chart for the CEO. At that point, the CEO was Steve Balmer.

And there were no women out of the 50. Wait, wait. Let's say, let's just pause on that. 50 people as a possible successor to bomber, all men? All men. And two people of color who are both Indian. And I'm like, you know, how can that be right in a company like Microsoft? How could it possibly be that there are 50 people and there are no women and they're only two people of color out of 50 and they're both Indian? And that was when Bill said, are you trying to destroy the, are you trying to effing destroy the company except he didn't say effing? He told that to you.

Yeah. At the board table. And I said, the other woman on the board, who's Dino de Blonde, when we had our first break, she came up to him. She said, Maria, it's so nice to have someone else that Bill was yelling at. Hmm. She said, did he give a, sorry, I'll let you continue. Did he give a reason or, I mean, this seems. You idiot.

Why would you think diversity in the succession chain matter? I mean, okay, so, and there was a fair amount of that kind of thing where if you, I mean, of course, so this was my first, I'd been on startup boards before, but this is my first public company. And so, of course, I got sent to a bunch of board training. So the first one I went to was at the Stanford Law School offered one. And you're told over and over again, the most important thing to do is ask questions. Right. And that's the, what's the board's for? It was just like, why would you ask questions? You know, why aren't you just shutting up?

Because, I mean, the thing, one of the things I was told was that in the early days of the board, that board meetings, they had to be held on weekends because Bill and Steve didn't want to use up valuable weekday time. for this nonsense of having to meet with the board. So they didn't have such a high opinion of what was the bill's role at the time? Because he had left the CEO. So what was he officially doing at Microsoft? He was chief software architect at that point. And did he have a board role?

He was on the board, yes. Okay. And, well, at that time, he was actually, he was chair of the board. Okay. So he was the board chair. And I think. I'm trying to remember who was the lead independent director when I first started. I think it was somebody who left the board soon after that.

And then it was Reed Hastings. And then it, you know, it moved around. Yeah. So you said, so like you're deciding to speak up now. And the reason is. Well, first of all, I just turned. 70 yesterday. Oh, happy birthday.

Yes, thank you. And I just realized that it's time to talk about some of these things. Like I, part of it, I think, is that I have a lot of respect for Melinda Gates. And I think before their divorce was announced, I was in some ways reluctant to criticize Bill. okay and because it would in some ways the criticism could be interpreted as also criticizing Melinda and I think I think Melinda has done amazing things I'm a huge admirer and so I think that was part of it you know I heard from a number of people afterwards that you know I got talked about in the valley as being very outspoken

Well, I am very outspoken. That is definitely true. And I just felt it was time to actually speak up about going through an experience like that. And it was interesting because before the Business Insider article was published, I had, you know, they always check, you know, so they checked with Microsoft. They spoke to Brad Smith. They checked with Bill, the people representing Bill. Bill's comment was he's always being a big champion of women. Look at all the things the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done to support women. Well, yeah, they have done amazing things, but that's not because of Bill. And so I had a conversation with Brad Smith, and I already said I have a lot of respect for Satchinadella.

I also have a lot of respect for Brad Smith. And he was sort of like, why would you do this now? And I'm sort of saying, because I think it's, it's, it was a really bad experience from my perspective. And I think people should start to talk about these kinds of things. Yeah. I mean, so just to recap, so the story is, I mean, fairly unbelievable, but I guess believable given the world that we live in. But you, you sit down with Satya. He has the questions ahead of time. Let me know if I'm getting any of this wrong. He has the questions ahead of time. One of them is, how should women ask for raises inside a company? He says trust the

system and karma will end up bringing the raises. And he gets criticized for that because the system hasn't been traditionally good at delivering raises to women. I mean, in tech for sure, we know that to be true. He then apologizes and says this is one of the main things that have helped his leadership inside Microsoft. And then the head of the head of the board comes for you? I mean, yeah. Am I getting that right? Yep. Oh, okay. Yeah. And, you know, what can I say? It's a good story, but it's really surprising. Right. Now, just let's take a moment. And so I want to hear from just before we go to break, from your perspective, when you heard the answer, trust the system. You know, I guess I'm trying to

myself inside his shoes. But he's trying to say, I mean, obviously he doesn't want everybody coming asking for raises right away. I'm trying to think what is he trying to say that maybe Microsoft is going to be good. Let me handle this. I got this. And what do you think he was trying to say? And what do you think was wrong with his answer? Okay. So I think that I think he was genuinely not picking up the difference between a woman wanting advice about asking a raise because women are well known to not be as willing to ask for a raise as men are. Yeah. And I think he was just talking in general about employees would be better off trusting the

system. And the reason I corrected him was that I really do think because women ask less often, that's one of the things that actually accounts for them being paid less. and being promoted less often. And that's the point I wanted to make. And I don't in any way think he was discriminating against women. But his response was interpreted as discriminating against women. Because it was at a conference for women in tech.

For women. Yeah. And you'd think that he learned, obviously, he did make some changes after that. After the break, I want to talk about some of the persisting issue. inside Microsoft. And maybe we can get a little bit into your time on the board. I'm always curious how these corporate boards work. And we've gotten a little bit of insight already. But maybe we could dig a little bit deeper from that than that, if that seems good to you. Sure. Okay. So we'll be right back here with Maria Clave on the big technology podcast. Stick around. We'll be back in just a

minute or two. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about the Hustle Daily show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on the big technology podcast with Maria Clave. She's served six years, six years, right, on the board of Microsoft, almost seven, and the president of Harvey Mudd College in California. In California, Claremont-California. Great. So I wrote about the instance that we talked about in the first part of the podcast in my book, Always Day One.

And while I was researching what was going on at Microsoft, I saw that some issues still persisted with the company's treatment of women. Now, the culture, it seems for a long time, has been the loudest guy in the room, often guy, very like kind of software engineer power type of place. And just like, yeah, the men that had sort of been there forever controlled it. So I wondered whether it had solved some of the issues that it had with treatment of women in the workplace. And then I saw there was a letter. This is a report from 2019 and Wired that had gone around. Microsoft, where women inside the company had complained about their treatment. So I'm going to see if I can read a little bit from the story.

So the story said, one woman wrote she had been asked to sit on someone's lap twice during a business meeting where HR and other executives were present and no one objected. The HR leader was later promoted while the woman was reprimanded for not following policy. That's unbelievable to read. And then here's another one. One woman mentioned that during a roundtable, with women for Xbox, nearly all the women had said they had been called the B word at work. So I saw you, obviously, you know, said he's making an attempt to approve.

I have no doubt that he had an earnest attempt to do it. Are you surprised, I mean, yeah, are you surprised to see some of these issues persist at Microsoft? What was, what's your reaction upon hearing some of this stuff? Well, I think that the first thing would say, it's a very big company. Yeah. And, you know, over hundreds of thousands. Yeah. Yeah.

Employees. And so my sense is that from talking to women at Microsoft is that things got much better in some parts of Microsoft and not so much in other parts. Okay. Which is, and a big part of this is culture. So I would say the Microsoft culture really was very much about the loudest person in the room. And whether you're a male or female, you were, the only way you were going to be taken seriously is if you knew how to argue your points effectively. But when women argue their points effectively, they're much more likely to be called the B word. And when men argue their points effectively, they're just being assertive.

but women are being aggressive and bitchy. So, and, you know, I'll never forget, I worked at IBM research for eight years after, starting in 1980. And when I started working at the Microsoft, at the IBM Research Lab in San Jose, California, one of the things I did early on at a lunch with the director of the lab was to say that I thought we should start a lecture series that was open to all lab members. And he basically said, there's no point in doing that. Most researchers don't know how to give a talk

that other people and other disciplines could understand. And I argued with them. And that got me the nickname of bitch on wheels. Oh, my God. And of course, I started a lecture series was called the Leonardo da Vinci lecture series and it was a success etc. I mean it wasn't going to stop just because

the director thought it was a bad idea but you know so I think the thing is that if you're at a place like Microsoft where in order to have to be heard you have to be really

very assertive about your ideas and you probably have to be persistent. and say it more than once because the first and second and third time you say it may not actually register, of course you get labeled a bitch. I mean, it just, there's sort of no way around that.

And the fact that, you know, if I think about Xbox, so I remember I was, I led a research project started 1992 on a gender differences in how children play with video games. And I had an interview with the person in charge of Nintendo for the U.S. as I was starting this work. And he just told me girls will never play video games. They don't like video games. We don't even think about them when we're thinking about producing things for Nintendo. And I was sort of like, that's ridiculous.

But, you know, there's so. much bias about video games and, you know, how women are represented in games, you know, large breasts, I mean, Cortana was, who's the Surrey-like individual for Microsoft, is named after a character in, you know, a basic standard video game with princesses and princes and thrones and violent action and so on. I could hardly be surprised at all that every woman in that round table, at some point, somebody would have called her a bitch. Did you ever bring up the Cortana thing at the board meetings?

I did. How did they react? It was just, you know, waved away. It doesn't matter. I mean, like, I'm going. Why would you want to name it after a character who is very heavily sexualized and that, you know, no woman in tech would want to be compared with? And they weren't. They weren't hearing it. Definitely not.

How much? So you mentioned Bill Gates. Let's talk about him for a moment. How much of this do you think was due to the culture that he developed at Microsoft? Do you think about the big tech companies? A lot of them are just kind of in the mold of their founders. Amazon is very Jeff Bezos, Facebook, is a Zuckerberg type of place. Microsoft, how much of this is sort of the culture? It's hugely from, you know, I would say Bill, Paul Allen, and Steve Palmer as well. And, you know, I think one of the things about somebody like Bill Gates is he literally thinks he's one of the smartest people in the universe. And he's a highly intelligent and successful person, but he's definitely not one of the smartest

people I've met, partly because he doesn't know what he doesn't know. I mean, he really thinks he can go talk to somebody for a couple of hours and he will understand deep things. And one of my favorite argument was Bill was when he told me that there was no real mathematical research being done in the last 20 years, that there were no real discoveries. And I happen to be, first of all, I'm a research mathematician, but I'm also on the board of the mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley, which is the top place in the world for convening mathematicians from around the world to basically work on the hottest topics. And I'm telling him about some of the recent discoveries in the last 20 years and, you know,

how big this is and et cetera. And he's like, no, no, I know. I talked to somebody who really knew the field and they told me there were no recent discoveries And I'm saying, you're talking to somebody who really knows the field and she's telling you that there are. And, you know, just sort of crazy. Yeah. And it's, so going back to the way I started the segment, Satya can come in and he's changed the culture for sure. But he had his work come out, cut out for him.

Oh, for sure. There was a lot to change. And I've always thought that the strategy of Microsoft, you know, he shifted it from the desktop operating system to cloud and mobile. That was one thing. The culture was always the toughest thing for him to change. And it takes time. I think, so there's a saying that culture eats strategy for lunch every day. I think changing culture is the hardest thing to change in any organization and does take a lot of time.

But I think he's made a lot of progress. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, yeah, I think you're right. Like, it's a big company. It's never going to be 100% right away. But from what I've heard from the people. I spoke with inside the company.

It is very different from, you know, the days of Gates and Balmer, where people are, people seem to be listened to in some way. And it's funny, like Gates and Balmer era doesn't seem like people really listen to. And that's kind of, I think, why the strategy went off the rails. And your experience, you know, is sort of indicative of what happened there. Yeah. I think, I think it really, they needed a reset. I think Satcha was a fantastic choice.

Now, to refer to Bill Gates, who pushed hardest to pick Sattia, it was Bill. It was Bill. Okay. It was Bill. And I think he was totally right. Yeah. Yeah, it was a good choice. Do you have any other fun Bill Gates stories?

Now that we're on a roll, I figured, okay, let's see if you're saying anymore. Well, you know, I guess one of the things I want to point out is that he was the person, who started the Giving Pledge. And so, you know, I don't want in any way to say that Bill has not done good things with his life. He certainly has done some very good things with his life. And I think, you know, much of the global health progress has come out of the Gates Foundation. And that's something he really pushed. He's pushing very hard on the climate change issue.

So, you know, I don't want to say this is somebody who, you know, this is somebody who's done a lot of very good things with his life as well. Right. So I would say that most of the, so most of the strange things are just one social interactions with him. And, you know, the fact that he can be very charming and very thoughtful and, you know, completely there and interacting with him. you. And then the next time you see him, it's like you're a fly on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something we, I mean, also he gets carded, I think, for some of the vaccine stuff that. Yep. Absolutely. And we talked about this on this show. He really pushed that forward. Yeah. And put pressure on a lot of countries to get their, their act together when it came to

the COVID vaccines and look at what it's done for us. So people are complex. But it doesn't mean we should let them off the hook, I guess, if they're going to be jerks, especially about important issues, like the ones we've talked about. So I'm just kind of curious. How does someone join a board of a company like Microsoft and what, let's end this section on this. Like, how do you join the board of a company like Microsoft? And what does it like participating in something like that?

Well, it was my first public company board. I think you will not be surprised that I was very, I mean, I really wanted to do it. I had noticed that Shirley Tillman, who's President of Princeton, had joined the Google board. And John Hennessy was on the Apple board and the Google board. And I had had a conversation with the board chair at the time at Harvey Mudd and said that I was interested in joining the board of public company. And he said, well, do you have any companies in mind? And I said, well, my two top choices, well, my three top choices will actually be probably Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Google's not going to happen because they already have an academic leader on the board. Well, actually, they have two academic leaders on the board. So Amazon and Microsoft would be my first choices. And he sort of laughed and said, you know, it's not like you're aiming high or anything. And that's the way to do it. Maybe two months after that, I got a phone call from Rick Rashid, who was then head of Microsoft Research and somebody I have known for a long time. I know a lot of people at Microsoft Research. And he said that they were considering adding an academic leader to the board.

And they were interested in somebody who had done a lot of strategic planning, which is something I have done a lot of. and somebody who's a computer scientist and a possible, a woman. Well, how many... Check, check, check. How many female computer scientists are presidents at higher ed institutions? One. So, and Rick, bless his heart, had... He said, you're probably not going to be interested in this.

And I said, Rick, it's on my to-do list. amazing and and so um the next thing was that i went up to seattle and had a meeting with bill gates for like 45 minutes and he spent pretty much all this time asking me about harvey mud and so on and then the next thing was that steve balmer came down to visit me at harvey mud and interviewed me and then I got elected to the board. And so when you're, I guess like you said, you've gone to some of these trainings, you're told to ask questions.

What was it like actually participating in the board? Were they receptive? What type of discussions did you have? I think it varied a great deal, what the particular topic was. And I think it also varied. Like a lot of the board work actually gets done in committee. And one of the committees that I was on, so I was on the Compensation Committee, but I was also on the Antitrust Committee, which was formed as part of the antitrust settlement with Microsoft.

And basically that was an effort to try to make sure that there was nothing Microsoft was doing that could be considered as going against the settlement. And then after the 10-year period, after the settlement ended, then they reformed it and became the Ethics and Public Policy Committee. And I found those discussions extremely interesting. Fascinated. The people that we were interacting with were interesting, open, respectful. And so I think just a lot of it depended. on who was present. And so, you know, I've already told you that, you know,

I have an enormous amount of respect for Satya and Brad Smith. I have a lot of respect for Kathleen Hogan and Amy Hood and, you know, a lot of the senior leadership team at Microsoft. So just different people have a different attitude to actually having a discussion, answering questions, asking questions themselves, And I always felt that, you know, with certain groups of people, people took everything you said very seriously and you were heavily engaged in with others that was less the case. Right. What type of questions would you tackle with the ethics part of your responsibilities?

Well, you know, there's a lot of questions about privacy. Partinent. I mean, obviously really important right now. a lot of questions about, you know, obviously one of the things that the antitrust settlement was about was this, the evidence that Microsoft was putting other competing products out of businesses by including a competing product within the operating system that came for free. And so, you know, Netscape is the obvious example where, you know, it basically lost out to IE and Internet Explorer. And, of course, Google Chrome has since, you know, basically. Crushed. But so a lot of these are sort of, you know, what's an appropriate way to use the influence that Microsoft has, you know,

other kinds of things are security issues. So I'll never forget at some point, we were told that Microsoft was moving to two-factor security as a way of really protecting everyone. And, you know, it was something that, you know, was clearly the best in class at the time. And it was a really good thing for Microsoft to do. So, you know, it's those kinds of issues were the kinds of things. that got discussed. I think I was really pleased that Microsoft came up with a privacy policy that, you know,

I thought was a really good step forward, particularly compared to what, I mean, Apple also has a very strong policy, privacy policy, Google, not so much, Amazon, not so much. So, you know, these issues. that was one place where I, one area where I felt Microsoft partly because of having been through the antitrust case, actually took some really strong positions on things. So it would be, you know, I don't want to imply that there weren't lots of occasions where I felt it was really useful to be on the board. The discussions were really helpful and it was possible to feel listened to and

expected because there certainly were many of those. But I guess on the diversity front, that was where it was a struggle. Well, it's a struggle with some people. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Well, I mean, I'll just say Kathleen Hogan is somebody who has really fought for diversity. Amy Hood is another one.

Sacko, obviously, is somebody who's pushed hard there. So, but, so I have a funny Bill story. So I had been invited to invite Bill. to be a co-host of a retreat at Sunny Lance. Sunny Lance is the former home of Walter and Lenore Annaberg. And it was going to be, it had been all refurbished, and they were going to start doing retreats. And it had been suggested to me by one of the mudboard members

that I asked Bill if he would be co-host. And I suggested the topic of increasing the diversity in STEM. and he said, I'm not interested in that. Bill Gates. Yes. And so then I said, okay, how about the use of technology in K-to-12 math education? He said, oh, yeah, I would do that. And I mean, and so that's what we did.

And the funny story out of that, and it was a fantastic retreat. And what came out of that was an organization called Ed Reports. that reviews math, science, and English language arts curriculum for K to 12. The initial primary funder was the Gates Foundation, but it's now supported by, in addition to Gates, who's still the largest supporter, it's supported by Hewlett, by Overdeck, by Schusterman, and the curriculum folks at the Gates Foundation,

I think it's the most impactful thing they've ever done in key to 12 curriculum. And so much so that they refer to it as a verb, like if they're looking in the Gates Foundation, if they're looking at something that they want to improve, they say, can we add reports it? So I helped found that organization. I've chaired the board since it was founded. And that came out of that retreat.

So that was a really good outcome. And so what I would say, say is there are things Bill's interested in and there's things he's not so interested in and when he's interested then he's a great part he can make real real impactful change yeah yeah okay do you have maybe 10 more minutes where we can talk a little bit about antitrust now that you brought it up sure okay all right let's go to break quickly and and come back and talk about antitrust we'll be back right after this and we're back here for one final segment on the big technology podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. It's already been 50 plus minutes. Thanks, Maria, again,

for joining us. Let's talk about antitrust because one of the things, so there are six bills in Congress right now that are targeted at the big technology companies, maybe Microsoft, maybe not, but certainly Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. There's also a new head of the FTC, Lena Khan, who is going to be very aggressive when it comes to enforcing some of the rules against these companies. And there's a question of even if it doesn't succeed, can the very nature of the fact that there's going to be regulatory pressure

end up hampering these companies' ability to do business? So, Maria, you saw this on the board, you know, serving on the anti-dress committee with Microsoft. What sort of burden, and I know there was a settlement, but what sort of burden does this type of activity place on a company that is targeted by it? And this may be a little speculative, but I'm curious what you think might happen to the four aforementioned or even Microsoft now that the guns are turned on them, so to speak. Yeah, so I mentioned that I worked for IBM research early in my career, and IBM had been targeted.

In fact, they were never actually charged, as I understand it. But, you know, Bell, Ma Bell was broken up. And that was enough that IBM was incredibly careful about trying to make sure there was nothing we would do in IBM research or any other part of the company that could lead to an antitrust suit. And, you know, I was there for the first eight years of my career and it had a big impact. I mean, just the fact that they were so serious about trying to make sure that they were not seen as shutting down competition was very interesting. And I think it did have one of the things that I think results that happened was that Sun was very effective in getting their workstations, their Unix workstations into academic computer science departments. and some microsystems

yes some microsystems and IBM really didn't push back I mean they they developed their own Unix workstations which were not particularly successful

and you know I just think it's just interesting I think that once you once you think that there's a significant chance

that you might be broken up or might be put under very significant restrictions, it puts a lot of pressure on a company. So that's the first statement. The second thing I would say is, you know, both Microsoft and Google have been hit by fines from the EU over antitrust issues. I think it actually had a significant, more significant impact on Microsoft's behavior than on Google's because Microsoft had been through the antitrust case in the U.S. Right. So, I mean, I have no idea of what is going to happen, but I do expect that the threat

of antitrust, given that we have an administration right now that seems pretty serious about it, will have a much more significant impact. over the next three and a half, four years that it has in the past. How did the specter of antitrust enforcement, the settlement, impact the way that Microsoft did business after? Because there's like, there was a view that, oh, Microsoft got away easy. Initially, it was ruled to be broken up and then agreed to stay together under certain conditions. So how did that actually manifest itself in Microsoft day-to-day? And as a corollary to that, do you think it helped increase innovation in the world?

Because that's what we're kind of worrying about with these bills targeting big tech is whether they're actually, they'll restrain them or help increase innovation. So having been through that with Microsoft, I'm kind of curious where you think that that factors. You know, I almost think that the antitrust suit caused Microsoft to start looking in new directions. And, you know, obviously the move to cloud computing has been a huge plus for Microsoft. And I think one of the things that absolutely had to do was move away from making all of its money by selling operating systems and finding another revenue stream. that could be equally and in the end much more lucrative. So I think it actually pushed Microsoft to be more innovative. I suspect, I mean, obviously, both Apple and Amazon have done phenomenally well during the pandemic.

Yep. They've got lots and lots of resources. you know, obviously we're going through the transition of Jeff Bezos leaving and Andrew Jassy taking over. Andrew Jassy, I mean, AWS has been phenomenally successful. So I have, you know, I have lots of confidence that Amazon will also do well. Apple, you know, Tim Cook is a very different leader from Steve Jobs, but Apple has done very very well under Tim's leadership. Facebook is a little bit more complicated because of their role in, you know,

disinformation that, you know, played, definitely played a role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But as far as I can tell, they're doing just fine. So the business is good. Everybody hates Facebook. The Republican says Facebook because they say it's, It censors, the Democrats hate Facebook because it's very good at spreading conservative content and then this information stuff that you mentioned. But, you know, I mean.

Business is in good shape. If I look at the people who are getting hired by any of these companies, they're very talented. They're very competitive. And same for Microsoft. They're all being very successful in hiring people at the early stage of their career, at the next. middle stage of their career, at the senior stages of their career, they're doing really well. I'm not worried about them lacking innovation in the future. Yeah. Okay, so it could unlock more innovation. Are you overall optimistic about this, about where technology is heading in this

country, in the U.S., and I guess worldwide, and I guess both in terms of innovation, and let's, let's end on this in terms of innovation, but also in terms of like the societal issues. like we've discussed so far today. Yeah. So, you know, AI is obviously, it's increasingly having impact on society and having impact in lots of ways that we don't actually know how to predict well. And I'm on the advisory committee for the Shortsman College of Computing at MIT. And I've been very impressed with some efforts they are.

making with an AI policy forum where they're really trying to increase the dialogue between the scientists and the government leaders, not just in the U.S., but, you know, I think we could screw things up really royally. And I think we also could use AI to make things a lot better in many areas like health care. Some amazing developments there, for sure. So I tend to be a pretty optimistic person, but I think the thing that I would say is there's never been a time when diversity is more important in technology because, and I don't mean just diversity in terms of gender or race or anything like that or, you know, poverty or social economic levels or any of those kinds of things. I mean, we need more people who understand AI and also understand, pick your favorite area from humanities and social sciences or from some other area of engineering. I mean, it's just, it's having so much impact on so many aspects of everything that we do. I feel like the most important thing we need to do is to make sure that we can educate people, at least at the bachelor's

degree level so that everyone can actually, it doesn't matter whether you're going to go into biotech or whether you're going to go into English literature or whatever so that people can actually understand data science, AI, and other aspects of technology, because it's going to happen whether we do this or not, and it's going to happen better if we have more voices at the table. Absolutely. Well, that's a great, great note to end it on. Thank you so much for your time, Maria. I really appreciate, you know, as I was working on the book, I think I added you on LinkedIn. And always in the back of my mind, I was like, I wonder if Maria would ever speak with me. And so I'm so glad we had a chance to talk today. And for you, for the fact that you were so

open about your experiences, I'm sure not easy stuff to talk about, but important stuff to bring out into the form. So thank you for coming on. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you for asking me. My pleasure. All right. Well, I think that will do it for us. I just I want to say quick thanks. Nick Gwattney, turning this around super quickly. He's our audio editor, Red Circle, for hosting the podcast and selling the ads. If you've heard some ads you like, that's Red Circle. If you heard some ads you don't like, that's my fault. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you made it all the way here, maybe give us a rating. If you enjoyed the podcast, we would appreciate that. And if this is your first time here and you want to subscribe, that would be great. We do this every Wednesday. Conversations with Tech Insiders or outside agitators or sometimes people who fall. somewhere in the middle. So that's the pitch. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next week on Big Technology Podcast.