I have just one question about Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comments regarding women’s compensation: Did he deserve all the outrage?
Let’s start with his actual words:
Maria Klawe: What do you advise women who are interested in advancing their careers but they’re not comfortable with putting themselves up for promotions or advanced opportunities?
Satya Nadella: The thing that perhaps most influenced me in terms of how you look at the journey or a career…There was this guy whose name is Mike Naples who was President of Microsoft when I joined, and he has this saying that 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 the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go long.
And that I think 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. Somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to give more responsibility to.
And in the long-term efficiency, things catch up. And I wonder whether taking the long-term approach helps solve for “Am I getting paid right?” Am I getting rewarded right?” The reality is the 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 somehow have to think that through.”
Opinion: The problem here isn’t that Nadella is insensitive to women’s realities. It’s that he’s insensitive to how things happen here on the planet I like to call “earth.”
The problem, that is, is that this isn’t how things actually work.
When an employee, male or female, does great work and that great work has impact, that doesn’t mean anyone in management will even know which employee deserves the credit.
Credit-stealing is routine in American business. Worse, or perhaps better, great work and impact are usually produced by a team. Balancing the importance of valuing team effort with the varying contributions of different team members is quite a difficult feat.
Also, Nadella seems to be implying that promotions and raises come from doing something that has a strong positive impact. I sure hope not. That’s what bonuses are for. Employers should give employees raises when they’re worth more in the employment marketplace, and promotions when they’re capable of a more responsible and valuable job.
What happens instead: When companies underpay employees the result is a short-term increase in profitability. And as accounting systems don’t have any way to represent the loss of talented employees on financial statements, the whole system is tilted in this direction.
The result: In the vast majority of corporations, employees don’t get what they deserve, they get what they negotiate, just like the ad in the in-flight magazines tells you.
Nardella’s response was, in many respects, thoughtful. The problem was that he failed to include something critical, namely, useful advice for the world as it actually is. A far better response would have been:
The situation for women at Microsoft … and at any other company, but I only have influence over Microsoft … should be exactly like the situation for male employees. What we’re striving for is that no employee should ever have to ask for a raise or promotion. We want every employee to be in a position they can succeed in, and that provides them with opportunities to achieve and grow. And we want to pay every employee what he or she is truly worth.
If we’re failing to do that for any employee, that employee should make her … or his … case and we should listen and make an objective judgment. We should give that employee a raise or promotion if one is warranted, and an honest response either way.
As a general rule, in U.S. businesses at least, men are better at negotiating these things than women. Worse, it’s considered okay for men to negotiate such things, much more so than for women who do the exact same thing.
And as the big three when it comes to compensation de-motivators are arrogance, disrespect and unfairness, it’s unsurprising that women, more than men, are likely to find their compensation de-motivating.
Were Mr. Nardella’s words disrespectful to women? I don’t think so. They were worse than that.
They were terrible advice.
Unfortunately, unless a woman is an undeniable expert in her field, her accomplishments and opinions are routinely discounted by members of both sexes.
At meetings of peers, a man can barf up anything at all, and he will get some response. A woman is likely to be ignored, no matter what she says.
Blacks and women have progressed in the last few decades- but still have a way to go
Well, that’s exactly what women find so disrespectful, patronizing, and demeaning. He’s telling women: You just sit there and play nice, and maybe eventually we’ll notice and give you raises and promotions. Meanwhile he’s laughing up his sleeve that he’s suckered all these women into working for cheap and never even asking for more. He knows his advice is wrong and terrible, and he’d never give it to men.
He does know how things work on the planet Earth, and in the company Microsoft – he’d never be where he is if he didn’t. What he is doing is even worse than giving out terrible and wrong advice: he is reinforcing the culture for women that you shouldn’t even ask for more or negotiate for more, you should be happy for what you have and hope your worth will eventually, maybe, in the long run (ppfftt – this is so hard to say with a straight face) be recognized.
Deliberately giving out bad advice for women is disrespectful and demeaning to us.
Thanks for your article. I certainly learned some new things, even though I’m a (black) guy.
As I keep thinking about it, it really is hard for me to justify Nardella’s comments as other than a determined, though probably unconscious, effort by him as a manager to de facto maintain the status quo, regardless of the harm it does to his employees or his organization.
And, the attitudes implicit in his comments can’t be seen as anything other than chilling for women, and by extension, blacks and other people of color from disadvantaged communities, in my opinion.
So thanks for demonstrating that there are constructive ways to looking at what some would call “political” issues of fairness, as a manager.
Too bad you weren’t there to give Satya your script – it was right on target! Having been in HR in IT, while it is true that the people who asked for raises were more likely to be men, there were many men who were just as unlikely as women to ask for raises. (And of the men who asked for raises, there were always some number who had an overinflated sense of self and didn’t get the raise – and undermined others’ perceptions in the process.) Because of the HR sensitivity to any hint of gender pay disparity, a woman working directly with HR could have an edge vs a man. In Satya’s defense, given his reference to karma, he may very well have been one of those people who did get raises, promotion etc without asking…
Personally, I strongly agree with Mr. Nadella and Mr. Naples. In the early 70’s I read the book “If You Can Count to Four” (by Dr. Jones). It was about achieving success in life. Two thirds of the book seemed to be about understanding money and its role in life. (As in, what you earn or receive is a reflection of your value. If you want more, you need to make yourself more valuable, through education, training, work, etc.) A core concept he espoused, which I took to heart, and have seen it repeated over and over in my life, and the lives of many others, is that you pursue your passion, that you identify what you enjoy doing, do it better than anyone else, and you will be appropriately rewarded (which isn’t necessarily financially). I have received jobs and offers without seeking them, promotions and raises without asking for them. This concept knows no color, no culture, no gender. Understand, however, that not everyone can be the CEO, or the best basketball player, or first chair violinist, or whatever you seek after. It may require making adjustments in order to accomplish (e.g. to be where you will be recognized for the value you are), possibly meaning a need to change jobs, or where you live, or your career path, or your associates.
Maria asked about what an individual woman, uncomfortable with self promotion, should do.
Satya responded with ‘she should have faith in the [HR] systems in place’
Given Bill Gates’ and Microsoft’s lobbying for the expansion of H1B visas despite widespread fraud, off-shoring and stagnation/deflation of IT salaries, is there a better example of “*You* should do a good job to expand *MY* bottom line”?