I also think you have stopped being critical too soon. It's very optimistic of you to imagine that the Gates foundation is 100% efficient at delivering money to poor people. They actually ban giving money directly[1]. I don't mean to say they are doing badly exactly - just to point out that the fact that all of that money runs through a single set of philosophical principles has impacts on how it is used and distributed.
I suspect that distributing the money to Microsoft employees would noticeably drop the total dollar amount devoted to charity, and exponentially increase the number of charitable experiments the money funds. I believe that's a good trade off - reasonable people can disagree.
[1] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/how-we-work/what-we-do...
> I suspect that distributing the money to Microsoft employees would noticeably drop the total dollar amount devoted to charity, and exponentially increase the number of charitable experiments the money funds. I believe that's a good trade off - reasonable people can disagree.
I pretty disagree strongly with that sentiment. Had the money been distributed to employees, a negligible amount would have gone to charity. It's a stark difference.
I (obviously) don't have exact stats for how charitable Microsoft employees would be if they had more money, but I remember the median annual donation amount for someone earning $60k-$80k in 2010 was $107. Roughly 0.15% of their income. The rate wasn't that different for higher income brackets either.
Dividing Gates' wealth (including his non-Microsoft shares, since he diversified) among 91,000 employees would give them each about $1.1 million. It wouldn't have been a lump sum payment realistically. It would have been given as stock options that grew to that value over these people's careers. That's not a huge pay boost for a Microsoft employee (one site lists the average compensation at Microsoft as $121k/year, or about $3M over 25 years).
Unless Microsoft employees are very unlike other people, we're talking about going from 99% of the money being donated to less than 1%.
As an aside, I believe Microsoft employees do own a larger share of Microsoft than Gates does, even if we converted all of Gates wealth back to Microsoft shares.