back to article Women, your 'superpower' is ... NOT asking for a raise: Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella has made his first major gaffe as Microsoft CEO, making several rather unwise comments to a room full of women working in tech. Speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing event, the Redmond honcho told the audience that women should avoid asking for a raise – and instead rely on "karma". "It' …

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  1. Mad Chaz

    "He still has a long way to go before matching his predecessor, however. Former boss and publicist's nightmare Steve Ballmer had a history of behaving rather erratically in front of cameras."

    What's fun is when you find yourself with a boss that think that is the proper way to talk with employees ...

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge

      "...history of behaving rather erratically in front of cameras."

      You make it sound like a negative thing...

  2. John Tserkezis

    "What's fun is when you find yourself with a boss that think that is the proper way to talk with employees ..."

    I wonder if Microsoft CEOs are hand-picked to have foot-in-mouth disease?

    1. Eddy Ito

      I think they are forced to play mumblety peg with pistols. It's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with.

    2. Tom 35

      That's just what happens when you have a guy giving advice to people who make less in a year then he makes by lunch time on January 1st.

    3. admiraljkb
      Joke

      "I wonder if Microsoft CEOs are hand-picked to have foot-in-mouth disease?"

      I think you'll find the corner office's bathroom medicine cabinet has been stocked with an anti-fungal mouthwash for some time now.

    4. Sandtitz Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      "I wonder if Microsoft CEOs are hand-picked to have foot-in-mouth disease?"

      Yes, it's a Microsoft thing, he's saying it wrong. Other CEOs are never controversial idiots.

  3. Mitoo Bobsworth

    CEO

    Chief Excremental Orator?

  4. raving angry loony

    He really said this? "It's not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,"

    What is he, so divorced from reality that he actually believes this drivel? Or so misogynist that he thinks just women should believe that drivel? Either way, he's a fucking idiot.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >What is he, so divorced from reality that he actually believes this drivel? Or so misogynist that he thinks just women should believe that drivel? Either way, he's a fucking idiot.

      Quit your current employer, honestly ... there are employers that value your talents and efforts.

      1. DropBear
        Facepalm

        Fuck these people.

        Quit your current employer, honestly ... there are employers that value your talents and efforts.

        Are there? I have only heard tales... and frankly, the ones I've seen so far all regarded employees as some sort of nearly-human minions, expendable sentient chimps or something; some of them actually expressed apparently honest perplexity as to why we withdraw our salaries the minute we get them (hint: what's left after paying last month's bills is barely enough for another month of food - but that's an alien concept for them).

        1. ecofeco Silver badge

          Re: Fuck these people.

          Exactly, dropbear. Might as well look for a unicorn or play the lotto as you'll have a better chance at those than finding an employer who really does value solid, quality work. The lucky few who are have no idea how sheltered their life is.

          That said, I think AC was being sarcastic.

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      "What is he, so divorced from reality that he actually believes this drivel?"

      No, he's the guy who is outright lying.

  5. Mark 85

    On the bright side.

    At least he didn't toss a chair or two.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: On the bright side.

      There's a tosser joke in there somewhere.

  6. Gray
    Devil

    Disrespect our corporate masters?

    Not surprising that Nadella should give voice to an American corporate premise: "It's not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise."

    A brazen request for a pay raise is prima facie disrespect towards one's corporate employer and a demonstrable failure of trust in the American corporate system of performance and rewards. In short, such an unwarranted request is a stain upon one's team loyalty. Team success is possible only when all team players adhere to team standards!

    Be ashamed and get back to work.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Disrespect our corporate masters?

      Been there, actually heard this.

  7. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Yeah, but...

    Yeah, I mean, you don't want to go around constantly asking for raises. But, some places if you don't ask for a raise, *you don't get a raise*. If there isn't something structured like quarterly reviews, or some bosses that keep on top of things informally, the pay rate is put into the payroll system, the hours are tallied up and a check's printed and mailed out. The boss may be busy with day-to-day operations and the topic just will never come up. I do have a neighbor that finally asked his employer for a raise after like 5 years, the boss simply hadn't realised what his pay (set 5 or 6 years ago) was, he was like "That's what you're getting? Damn" and he got a nice raise.

    1. Johan Bastiaansen

      Re: Yeah, but...

      My experience, after working nearly 15 years for a company, I never got a raise. I was in sales and though the sales targets where raised regularly, I still outperformed them. For 2 years in a row I was on a roll so I nearly got an average income. That made some people really nervous so a new and very complex bonus system was introduced and it would nearly wipe out my bonus.

      I held them to the labor contract and was fired.

      So that's what karma did for me.

      Oh, and I got a couple of teary emails after I got a lawyer and sued them for the bonus they owed me.

      1. Fair Dinkum

        Re: Yeah, but...

        Same here. It is not karma that did it to you though (and many others here) but dirty greedy lying bastards like that Microsoft waste of oxygen.

        I think IT is the most interting occupation in the world, but the wrong kind of people are in management.

        Wasn"t always like that.. I'm pushing 50 now and looking forward to retirement, bloody shame.that is.

  8. Jos
    Happy

    Just for fun.

    Don't shoot me. Here's Jim Jefferies on the subject:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fi7lmlQmM

    From 6m:36s...

    Enjoy your weekend later :-)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh Noes!

    He offended the wimmenz! And a room full of wishful thinkers at that too..

    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704415104576250672504707048

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh Noes!

      No he offended hard working people who deserve what they're owed.

      Some companies will happily rip the piss out of their employees when it comes to paying them, if you don't ask you don't get. He's basically acting like some dark satanic mill owner from the 1700s, telling employees that they're lucky they get paid and to shut up and put up and if they pray really, really hard they might get a few crumbs from the corporate table!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh Noes!

        "He's basically acting like some dark satanic mill owner from the 1700s, telling employees that they're lucky they get paid "

        The twenty-first century phrase is " be glad you have a job".

        I got a seventy cent an hour raise last year, that is not counting the benefits cuts.

        1. Fatman

          Re: Oh Noes!

          The twenty-first century phrase is " be glad you have a job" "we have to cut costs in order to increase shareholder value".

          FTFY!!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the real wow

    is that he said sorry, straight away, and without self-justifying weasel words. Not many CEOs like that around...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: the real wow

      He's new.

    2. Lallabalalla
      Flame

      Re: the real wow

      No he didn't - he claimed to have "said it wrong", not that "it" was wrong. Then he put the onus on "the industry" to put things right instead of taking responsibility to do this himself as head of a huge corporation. He's a weasel dickwad CEO same as the rest of them.

      I call shill.

  11. Christoph

    "I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. "

    I believe that it's insane to suggest anything else.

    Mind you, theoretically the bosses should be paid by the amount of work they actually do compared to the amount the employees do. And that's not likely to happen any time soon!

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      > "I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. "

      > I believe that it's insane to suggest anything else.

      Sure, but in the real world how do you do that? First there's a problem with the metrics. Do you consider yearly pay, per-hour, bi-monthly, on the results (per-project)? With each method comes caveats, as not everyone works the same number of hours, results can depend on your work and abilities but also on a good serving of luck, etc. Then there's the fact that in a lot of places pay calculation depends on your overall experience and on your seniority in the place, meaning that things get hairy pretty quick if you're trying to compare pay between 2 people of different ages and/or who weren't hired at the same time. So the only way really is to make it retroactive, i.e. in the end of the, say, year, you crunch the numbers, with a lot of equivalent-this and compensatory-that (to account for holidays, number of worked hours, position in the local food chain, performance reviews etc) and you can tell if you've been paying fat black redhead women less than fit blond white men (or any other 2 categories that you may want to compare).

      Then you can retroactively make adjustment "attention all blue-eyed staff, please head to your local HR office immediately for a 2% pay cut. Thank you for your cooperation" or sumfin' (OK, not really, what you would do is tweak the raises for the upcoming year I guess, and hope that things will equilibrate).

      Not as easy-peasy as it may seem at first.

      1. Lamont Cranston
        Boffin

        re: Not as easy-peasy as it may seem at first.

        It's a lot easier than your making it sound. Established pay-scales, and regular reviews to ensure that employees have the opportunity to progress up their pay-scales. 2 people, doing the same job, will be on the same pay-scale, at points determined by their respective experience/performance.

        (Icon is sarcastic - this really isn't rocket science)

        1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
          Boffin

          Re: re: Not as easy-peasy as it may seem at first.

          > 2 people, doing the same job, will be on the same pay-scale, at points determined by their respective experience/performance.

          Yes, they are on the same payscale. It would be illegal to have separate ones. The point being argued here is, is the "fluffy factor" (experience/performance/etc recognition) evaluated and taken into account the same way. And that's where the icon is NOT sarcastic.

          1. Lamont Cranston

            Re: re: Not as easy-peasy as it may seem at first.

            @Pierre

            Unless employers aren't sure what they're hiring people for, recognition and performance measuring shouldn't be all that difficult - appraisals can be a pain in the arse, but they're not really as arduous as we all think. I don't think experience isn't relevant to remuneration, rather it's taken into account during the recuitment phase.

            Maybe I'm just lucky to be working in the public sector, where we have clearly defined (and published) pay scales, and tend to progress up them in an orderly fashion?

        2. A Twig

          Re: re: Not as easy-peasy as it may seem at first.

          @Lamont

          It isn't that simple - while one employee and another have the same job "on paper" according to HR - I have yet to ever be in a place of work where two people with identical job titles and descriptions have the same responsibilities and levels of effort required to carry them out.

          Take a pub for example - two barmen (or barwomen - no gender bias implied). One works two quiet 3 hour afternoon shifts every week. The other works 5 - 11 on a Friday night. The effort, challenges and responsibilities are going to be very different, and the opportunity cost of their leisure time they are giving up is different.

          According to your simple example, if they both started at the company at the same time, doing the same hours and are doing a respective "good job" - should they get paid the same?

          1. Lamont Cranston

            @ A Twig

            No, if the effort, challenges and responsibilities are going to be very different, I'd set this out in the job descriptions, and set the two positions at different points on the pay scale. They may start at the same company, at the same time, working the same number of hours, and both do a "good job," but they would not be working the same job. It might be as simple as paying a higher hourly rate for the unsociable hours of the evening shift.

            I'm going to regret this when someone pulls out the relevant piece of legislation that shows my solution to be somehow illegal, but it's surely a fine principle?

            1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

              Re: @ A Twig

              > but it's surely a fine principle?

              It certainly is, but that's where the trouble kick in regarding gender equality: for the end of the evening shift, say, starting at half past pissed, you may want to have more bartenders of the burly, hairy-chested type as opposed to the squishy curvy type, for obvious reasons (including the squishy type not wanting to actually get squished)... and you're not paying the same wages... see the problem here?

              Of course there's a very valid reason to begin with, but from outside it may look like you're willingly paying women less than men. That's where you have to put in all these compensatory-this and equivalent-that which makes the calculations that much more complicated, as I was saying (although I did not have this particular problem in mind at the time, I was thinking more along the line of out-of-hours work and such).

            2. Tom 35

              Re: @ A Twig

              Yes, that's not paying different people different rates, it's paying different rates for different shifts.

              I worked at a place that paid higher for the over night shift even though there was not much work, and it was boring as hell just because no one wanted to work that shift.

              Now if you want to only hire men for the expensive shift, and women for the cheap shift...

      2. sabroni Silver badge

        @ ElReg!comments!Pierre

        However much you may talk it up, it's difficult to see how having two separate pay grades for men and woman can be less complicated than having one for both sexes. Sounds like nonsense to me.

        1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

          Re: @ ElReg!comments!Pierre

          > having two separate pay grades for men and woman

          WTF are you talking about?

    2. oddie

      "I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. "

      I believe that it's insane to suggest anything else.

      -I see where you are going with your statement; that we shouldnt fall over ourselves to compliment actions that are common sense and expected, but sometimes the obvious must be vocalised.

      Especially if there are people who don't think its insane 'to suggest othervise', if no one challenges your views you don't think about them, you take them for granted.

    3. Robert Helpmann??
      Joke

      Performance-based Proportional Pay

      ...theoretically the bosses should be paid by the amount of work they actually do compared to the amount the employees do.

      The are paid on that basis, it is just not a simple proportional relationship.

    4. Jagged

      "I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. "

      - I agree. The problems arise when people believe that everyone should get the same pay for doing the same JOB.

    5. Fatman

      RE "Hard" working bosses

      Mind you, theoretically the bosses should be paid by the amount of work they actually do compared to the amount the employees do.

      If that were ever to be applied to the sales weasels at my WROK PALCE, then some of them would have to take on second jobs (too much time out on the golf course, out playing tennis, etc).

  12. jake Silver badge

    The mind boggles.

    Apparently Redmond STILL doesn't have politically correct mentors for the upper management. I'd be appalled if I were pushing MS kit ... but at the moment, I find it a bit of a giggle :-)

    1. TheOtherHobbes

      Re: The mind boggles.

      The irony is that when he posted that idiotic 'I synthesized your job losses' email, everyone was all 'Oh he had to sound like an uber-plonker because lawyer rewritings because teh US employment law is teh complicated.'

      Now it turns out - nope, he's just another mouth-breathing C-suite Gollum.

  13. John P

    I see where he was going with it, but he did say it very badly.

    I think what he was trying to say is that you shouldn't need to ask for a raise, but the company you work for should reward you for your hard work, regardless of whether you are male or female.

    In my current job, I was going to ask for a raise at my last appraisal but my boss beat me to it and gave me a raise before I had to ask.

    I realise this isn't how things work in the vast majority of companies, but it is really how it should be which I thing is what he was trying to get at.

    As it is, it just sounded like "don't ask for a raise dear, you'll get one when your boss thinks you're worth it", which has a much more sinister tone to it!

    1. Anonymous Bullard
      Facepalm

      Why ask for more money when you can just get "karma" instead?

      1. Fatman

        RE: "Why ask for more money when you can just get "karma" instead?"

        Because karma doesn't pay the fucking bills!

        I can't go to my local electric utility and pay them in 'karma'; they want ("borrowing" from Jackson Browne) 'legal tender'. Duke Puke energy doesn't give a shit about 'karma'. (See below:)

        http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/duke-energy-says-it-erred-in-meter-malfunction-that-nearly-cost-company/2197835

        http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2014/10/07/duke-energy-misreported-credit-information-thousands-hoosiers/16864605/

        http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/duke-energy-gltich-may-hurt-your-credit-score

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The correct term should be: "People should get paid depending on their work, regardless of sex"

    For example, if my male employee was better than the woman employee - should the woman worker get the same?

    The correct response should be: "Why are you stating their sex?"

    Let me add my little dilema... I have two workers. Mr X and Mrs Y - Mr X is marginally better (experience, attitude, etc.), but I feel pressured to either mark him down, or mark Mrs Y up in order to give her "equal pay".

    1. DanDanDan

      Gender agnostic is fine - but!

      > The correct term should be: "People should get paid depending on their work, regardless of sex"

      Agreed, but you have to realise that there *is* a gender pay gap and the only way to address it is to investigate gender as a factor to see *why*. It'd be great if we lived in a world where there were no biases, but that's not here yet.

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