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.