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Microsoft terminates jobs of engineers who protested use of AI products by Israel's military [1]

['Hayden Field']

Date: 2025-04-07

Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, right, chats with actor Brenda Song during an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, in Redmond, Washington, April 4, 2025.

Microsoft terminated the employment of two software engineers who protested at company events Friday over the Israeli military's use of the company's artificial intelligence products, according to documents viewed by CNBC.

Ibtihal Aboussad, a software engineer in the company's AI division who is based in Canada, was fired Monday over "just cause, wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty," according to one of the documents.

Another Microsoft software engineer, Vaniya Agrawal, had said she would resign from the company on April 11. But Microsoft terminated her role Monday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. The company wrote that it "has decided to make your resignation immediately effective today."

Both employees chose Microsoft's 50th anniversary event to publicly voice their criticism.

What Microsoft had hoped would be a celebratory period has turned into a brutal few days for the company, which is being hit, along with the rest of the market, by President Donald Trump's widespread tariffs.

The tariffs are a topic that CEO Satya Nadella and his two predecessors, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, were forced to uncomfortably confront Friday in an interview with CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin.

"As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good," Ballmer said about the tariffs.

Meanwhile, the celebration itself captured headlines more for the protesters' shared message than for Microsoft's half-century of accomplishments.

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[1] Url: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/07/microsoft-fires-engineers-who-protested-during-anniversary-celebration.html

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