Xbox’s former chief operating officer, Helen Chiang, suddenly left Microsoft less than two weeks ago after being promoted into the role in July. I wrote in my Notepad newsletter last week that it seemed very weird for Chiang to suddenly depart Microsoft after 21 years with a surprisingly short memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Now, Chiang says she has “serious concerns” about how she was treated.
In a lengthy LinkedIn post — entitled “clarity is kindness,” a reference to Sharma’s WSJ profile — Chiang doesn’t dispute that she was fired, but she doesn’t say why she was let go. Eurogamer reported last month that Chiang had been “terminated for policy violations,” but she says this is “not accurate.”
Chiang denies unfounded rumors that speculated she was leaking confidential information, or that she left to join a competitor. It’s clear the decision to leave Xbox was out of her hands. “You don’t spend two decades somewhere without developing a deep loyalty to the people, teams, and businesses you’ve helped build,” says Chiang. “Xbox was never just another stop in my career. My end game was always to keep building here.”
She also denies engaging in “discrimination, bullying, harassment, insider trading, embezzlement, or other fraudulent activity.” Like I wrote in Notepad last week, Chiang has been described to me by multiple Xbox employees as highly respected, with high integrity. “I stand by my record: both the results I delivered and the way I have treated people throughout my career,” says Chiang.
The most significant part of Chiang’s post is a paragraph on fairness and accountability, hinting that she wasn’t treated fairly:
I believe in fairness, accountability, and holding ourselves to the standards we expect of others. Those standards only mean something when they’re applied consistently. I have serious concerns about how they were applied in my case, and I believe those concerns deserve to be taken seriously.
Chiang also says “This is not how I ever imagined my story here would end. And it is not the whole story.”
We’ve reached out to Chiang to ask if she’s pursuing legal action against Microsoft. We’ve also asked Microsoft to comment on Chiang’s post, but the company didn’t respond in time for publication.