Microsoft fires 2 employees who protested during company's 50th anniversary

By Matt Day

 

Microsoft Corp. dismissed two employees who disrupted an event celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary.

 

Ibtihal Aboussad, who has urged the company to ax the Israeli government as a customer, interrupted a speech by Microsoft consumer artificial intelligence chief Mustafa Suleyman on Friday. Later, Vaniya Agrawal disrupted a question-and-answer session featuring Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and his two predecessors, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. 

 

Both employees were asked by event staff to leave the venue, a tent that had been erected at one of the athletic fields on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters campus.

 

The company informed Aboussad that her employment had been terminated due to “acts of misconduct,” according to an email reviewed by Bloomberg. Agrawal had pledged to resign effective April 11, but Microsoft told her on Monday that it had accepted her resignation effective immediately.

 

The company didn’t immediately provide comment.

 

“Mustafa shame on you,” Aboussad told Suleyman, in part. “You claim that you care about using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have died.”

 

Suleyman responded, “Thank you for your protest. I hear you.”

 

Microsoft, in the termination notice, told Aboussad the accusations were “hostile, unprovoked and highly inappropriate.”

 

Both employees worked as software engineers, they told Bloomberg last week. They’re affiliated with No Azure for Apartheid, a group that has protested Microsoft’s sales to the Israeli military over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza. The pair lost access to their corporate email and chat accounts shortly after Friday’s protests, they said.