Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was forced to backtrack after suggesting at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference on Thursday that women shouldn’t actually ask for a raise.
“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” Nadella (pictured) said to the mostly female audience at the conference.
Nadella’s comments were flagged by Valleywag via Readwrite. He made the comments during a conversation with Harvey Mudd College president Maria Klawe, a computer scientist, who is on Microsoft’s board of directors.
“That might be one of the initial ‘super powers,’ that quite frankly, women [who] don’t ask for a raise have,” Nadella said. “It’s good karma. It will come back.”
ReadWrite pointed to a Peninsula Press study from February which found that men who have a graduate or professional degrees make 73 percent more than women with the same qualifications in Silicon Valley. Men with a bachelor’s degree also earn 40 percent more than women with the same credentials, the study found.
In a tweet later Nadella said he had been inarticulate earlier.
Was inarticulate re how women should ask for raise. Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias #GHC14
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) October 9, 2014
“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise…”
Which is precisely why we have unions. Faith don’t buy shit.
Somebody run the numbers for Microsoft. Because he just became a poster boy for discriminatory intent.
I know what he meant to say but wow “inarticulate” is a huge understatement.
“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise”
In the context in which Nadella said this, it was applicable to women… but let me tell ya, this quote is revealing and applicable to ALL WORKERS.
Allow me to paraphrase Molly Crabapple: companies are there to exploit you and to extract as much labor out of you as possible while paying you as little money as possible. Always treat companies with intense cynicism and try to exploit them back as much as you can.
Well I was just contemplating a new laptop and this is the best reason I know to buy Apple again.
Karma is a bitch isn’t it Satya!