As someone who frequently thinks out loud as a way to work through ideas, I totally get how you could say things that you don't mean or come off entirely wrong given hindsight.
But I just plain disagree with your characterization of what he said. He was clear and articulate in the video. His words were not misunderstood or misinterpreted or out of context. I don't think they "came off" wrong. I think they were wrong.
Sometimes that skill is a detriment, obviously. Usually it's a boon.
Maybe he answered too quickly. Though he didn't back down when challenged by the interviewer (who got a round of applause from the audience) and says he left the conference "energized." I'm not sure at what point realized he screwed up -- I'm guessing when Twitter exploded against him?
It's an early gaffe from an otherwise politically-savvy CEO. Next time he'll know not to bother with minor appearances such as these, because it's not worth the cost.
EDIT: So it's actually a very long-winded question and employees not asking for a raise is the explicit subject of the question. I'm transcribing it from the video that eli linked to below (thanks for the link) so that we can see the full context. I'll transcribe the answer too.
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Q (interviewer): So one of the questions that somebody asked was how do you-- what do you advise to women who are interested in advancing their careers but they're not comfortable putting themselves up for promotions or advanced opportunities? And there was an interesting-- I just came from the Most Powerful Women's Summit in Laguna Niguel, and some of the other people here also made that trip to Phoenix, and there was someone who was talking about the fact-- it was Mary Barr, who is probably someone whom you're familiar with as well, and she was talking about the fact that she had never asked for a raise. And then her interviewer looked out at the audience, which was a lot fewer people than here, and asked "How many people had never asked for a raise in their life?" And I would say about a quarter to a third of the attendees raised their hands. And an interesting one was Warren Buffet-- and don't ask me why Warren Buffet is at the most powerful women's summit-- apparently he's been doing it for many years. So, you know, for women who aren't comfortable with asking for a raise or sort of saying-- who aren't the younger you, let's say-- what's your advice for them?
A (Nadella): You know, the-- the thing that-- umm, perhaps most influenced me in terms of how you look at the journey or the career. There was this guy, whose name was Mike Naples, he was the president of Microsoft when I joined, and he had this saying where he would say, "Look all sys-- all HR systems-- are long-term efficient, short-tem inefficient", and umm, I thought that that phrase just captured it, which is 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, 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'll come back! Because somebody's gonna know, "That's the kind of person that I wanna trust! That's the kind of person that I reeeally want to give more responsibility to." And in the long-term efficiency, things catch up. 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 the reality is that your best work is not followed by 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.
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In context, there is some specificity to this question. The interviewer asked him what he'd say to women who are too timid to ask for raises, and he said they're in a good position because you shouldn't be asking for raises anyway, and then went on to elucidate very general principles about how high-quality works percolates through the organization before it results in increased long-term rewards.
The interviewer continues to state how she'd been hired by other women at 50k under market because she said "just pay me whatever you want", and encourages the other attendees to learn to negotiate salary. Somehow I don't really see how this is a gender-specific issue at all. Lowballing an employee like that would've been seen as a win for the female hirer, and it happens just as much if not more to male employees who walk in and say "Please mistreat me" as this interviewer did. This also has nothing to do with the question of requesting a raise when you're already employed.
And I am sorry to say that women often make less then men even doing the same job with the same qualifications. That was the whole point of the question! One of the theories for part of this pay gap is that women are less willing to ask for raises. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male%E2%80%93female_income_disp...
From the article, it sounds like what was asked to me. The article says he was asked "how women should ask for raises". We don't know if this is what was actually asked (it's not quoted in the article) or if the author assumed a general question about raise-asking referred specifically to women due to the venue. If someone has a video where we can get some additional context, that'd be great. Otherwise, I don't think we have enough data to really argue about it. You assume the implicit context and political baggage since this was posed at a woman's conference, and I don't, and I don't think Nadella did either.
>it's still a crummy answer
I think it's a fine answer. It's what he thinks about the topic. Maybe you disagree with him and think it's a poorly-reasoned opinion, but it's still a good answer, that is, it's still an actual response to the question that's reflective of his real opinion.
As to wage gap, agreed it's not something to get into here, but here's one link from a non-partisan source. [1] I was just talking to Democratic activists that freely admitted this and believe the problem is that women are kept out of career by subtle social forces, not that they get paid way less than men for the same title/position. The DNC site wants to leave this ambiguous because they know people will be much less incensed by these perceived subtle social forces than by an obvious inequity. I'll leave it at that.
[1] http://www.zebrafactcheck.com/dnc-muddles-wage-gap-issue/
Please stop trying to force partisan politics into this discussion. There is evidence that women get paid somewhat less for the same jobs, even when adjusting for age and title and skills and education and experience. Check the footnotes to original research on that wikipedia page.
Nadella's initial comment was inarticulate in the sense that it could easily be misunderstood, but I heard "trust that if you acquire rare and valuable skills, the system will work for you, no matter your sex".
FTA: "He said it's not about asking for raises, and that women should trust in the system to reward them as they go along. Not asking for a raise is "good karma," because someone will know that that's the kind of person he or she will want to trust"
I read: "Focus on developing your craft and the salary (or control, or flexibility, etc) you can gain through exchanging your growing value will naturally grow as well." Being better naturally provides you with more options.
Part of the issue is an unfortunate framing of racisim, misogyny, etc. as being illogical. This misrepresents a structural issue; racism and misogyny are entirely logical within their respective ideological underpinnings.
Hence a core issue: that there is a congruency between conditions and events and an underlying ideological system. To suggest that one can transplant conditions and events of another ideological system (EG Rationalist to Teleological) is a myopically laughable proposition.
That he admits to having learned something from this experience, though, is surely a positive.
He should just avoid these types of conferences all together so that things like this don't get negatively construed by association.
Absolutely. And this shows how useless this type of conference really is. If there's only one right answer to the question, the only benefit to attending is to pose for holy pictures about how sensitive you are to the needs of $DISADVANTAGED_GROUP.
I wasn't there, but the article says that both the question and his response addressed women:
> Earlier at that conference, Nadella was asked to give his advice for women wanting to ask for a raise. He said it's not about asking for raises, and that women should trust in the system to reward them as they go along.
He was asked what he thought about women who are too afraid to ask for a raise. And he said he thought they were better off because people shouldn't ask for a raise anyway. The question did specify women, though really it's applicable to anyone who is too nervous to ask for a raise, and Nadella responded with a non-gender-specific response except an attempt to pander by saying being afraid to ask for a raise "might be an additional superpower" of female employees, in effect stating that women have superior political instincts.
On top of believing something as retrograde and absurd as that, he is tone deaf to the especially unfair treatment of women.
Whether he should resign or not really depends on whether these views reflect those of Microsoft's board of directors.
EDIT:
Apparently Microsoft has a sock puppet/shill brigade on HN now. That's unfortunate.
I have never ever asked for a raise in my life and I did pretty well for myself.
Yes and do you think this benefits the workers or the companies?
You do know about the recent anti-trust lawsuit against several of the companies you named for their non-poaching agreements right?
These companies do all that they can to hold their workers' wages down.
> I have never ever asked for a raise in my life and I did pretty well for myself.
Imagine how well you'd have done for yourself had you not been such a pushover.
EDIT:
I will also add that it has always been my philosophy that if you do not feel you deserve a raise, you're doing a shitty job.
After I made that edit the down votes were removed/counteracted.
How come he has managed to do a complete 180 turn and now strongly believes that women should ask for a raise? He didn't believe that at the talk. Why should we accept this 'belief' now?
This concern overrode his other concerns at the time he was speaking live in front of a crowd.
The revised answer is the politically correct one. It's what fits with the current pro-feminist narrative in media and pop culture.
Tell me you've never started answering a question and halfway through you start realizing the path you've started going down is not what you want to be saying.
Just look at these comments on this article - he admitted his mistake and he still is being lambasted.