Satya Nadella appears to have stumbled into his first controversy as Microsoft CEO, drawing fire for his comments on women asking for raises.
He later apologized and said he "answered that question completely wrong."
At issue was Nadella's appearance at Thursday's Grace Hopper Conference Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Phoenix, where he was interviewed by Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College.
When Klawe asked Nadella what advice he had for women who are not comfortable asking for pay raises, the CEO said that "it's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along."
"I think that might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don't ask for a raise have," Nadella continued. "Because that's good karma; it'll come back. Because somebody's gonna know that's the kind of person 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."
The Redmond chief's comments unsurprisingly caused a stir among women in the workplace, many of whom took to Twitter Thursday to criticize Nadella.
Is @satyanadella so out of touch with MS mgmt that he thinks u don't need to push hard to get a raise, or is that just what he tells #GHC14?
— Leigh Honeywell (@hypatiadotca) October 9, 2014Lots of murmurs in the crowd as @satyanadella says that if you don't ask for a raise, you'll eventually get fair pay #ghc14
— Lauren Schaefer (@Lauren_Schaefer) October 9, 2014
Klawe politely pushed back, telling Nadella that "this is one of the very few things I disagree with you on"—which earned applause from the audience, who, until then, had sat in silence during the CEO's comments.
Thanks goodness Maria Klawe is there to give women practical advice on asking for a raise, after the male speaker failed. #ghc14
— P. Oppenheimer (@priscillaoppy) October 9, 2014The backlash prompted Nadella to tweet that he had been inarticulate.
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, 2014Microsoft later published an email Nadella sent to Microsoft staff about the incident, in which he said "I answered that question completely wrong."
"Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap," he wrote. "I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work.
"If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask," Nadella said.
You can watch Nadella's appearance in the video below. For more, check out his comments in Windows 10 from the Gartner Symposium earlier this week.