As word of his comments lit up Twitter,Satya Nadella quickly tweeted a clarification. Microsoft CEO clarifies pay comment

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took some heat — then tried to make amends — over his comments Thursday that suggested women should not ask for pay raises and instead trust the system.

The comments sparked an immediate Twitter backlash, tapping into longtime frustrations over the tech industry’s treatment of women and lack of gender diversity.


During an on-stage interview at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Phoenix, Nadella was asked point blank: “For women who aren’t comfortable with asking for a raise … what’s your advice for them?”

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Citing a colleague, Nadella began: “‘All HR systems are long-term efficient, short-term inefficient.’ And I thought that phrase just captured it. Which is, it’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith the system would actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that I think that might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma, it will come back. Because somebody’s going to know, that’s the kind of person that I want to trust; that’s the kind of person I want to really give more responsibility to.”

“And, in the long-term efficiency, things catch up,” Nadella continued. “And I wonder — and I’m not saying that’s the only approach — I wonder whether taking the long term helps solve for what might be perceived as this uncomfortable thing of, ‘Hey, am I getting paid right? Am I getting rewarded right?’ Because reality is, your best work is not followed with your best rewards; your best work then has impact, people recognize it, and then you get the rewards. And you have to somehow think that through, I think.”

As word of his comments lit up Twitter, the new Microsoft CEO quickly tweeted a clarification.

“Was inarticulate re how women should ask for raise,” he wrote. “Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias.”