Paul Allen, who reportly did alot more programming work than Bill Gates, recieved less equity. Allen was working for another company at the time and so Gates ar

Paul Allen, who reportly did alot more programming work than Bill Gates, recieved less equity. Allen was working for another company at the time and so Gates argued that he deserved more equity as he was working on Microsoft full-time. The company he worked for was MITS and was Microsoft's only customer for BASIC at the time. So essentially Allen was contracting for Microsoft and really deserved equal if not more shares. He resigned when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 1983. His father had just died and he decided that there was more to life than work and left Microsoft permanently although he remained a member of the board until 2000. It's also said he overheard Gates and Ballmer discussing how to get back his shares if he died and that really was why he left.