Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe's Stanford classmates say she wasn't a good coder

Key Points:

• Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founded Phia, a digital personal shopping assistant startup, but her qualifications in coding are questioned as she did not take advanced computer science classes at Stanford, where she graduated early with a degree in human biology.
• Gates and her co-founder, Stanford roommate Sophia Kianni, are embroiled in a controversy over Phia's alleged "cookie-stuffing" practice, which could have allowed the company to earn commissions on sales without actually directing shoppers to retailers.
• Leaked Slack messages reportedly show Kianni encouraging engineers to maintain the "cookie-stuffing" feature, contradicting the company's initial claim that it was a software bug; Phia has since disabled the feature and is reviewing sales affected by it.
• Following the shutdown of the controversial feature in July, Phia's average daily revenue dropped significantly from approximately $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000, highlighting the financial impact of the scandal.
• Stanford and the Gates family have not commented on the situation, while some Stanford computer science students reportedly mocked the startup and questioned the founders' technical expertise.