Women! Your 'super power' is to not ask for a raise, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Foot-in-mouth moment for Microsoft CEO as he tells women to keep quiet if they want a pay rise

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has suggested that women in the IT industry should stop trying to close the "gender pay gap" and instead "have faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along".

Nadella, speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Phoenix, Arizona yesterday, has subsequently dealt with a blast of disapproval from around the world, starting with his on-stage interviewer, Maria Klawe (a Microsoft director) who told him she disagreed with his statement, drawing immediate cheers from the audience.

Klawe suggested that women should do their homework on salaries, and very definitely ask for pay rises in line with their male counterparts.

Before Klawe's reaction, Nadella had also suggested that keeping quiet about pay could be seen as an "additional 'super power' that, quite frankly, women who don't ask for a raise, have". He suggested not asking would be "good karma" that would "come back".

"Because somebody is gonna know 'that's the kind of person I want to trust, that's the kind of person I want to really give additional responsibility to".

With the "somebody" in question widely interpreted as being a man, in a male-dominated industry, Nadella has spent the time since the conference dealing with a backlash on Twitter. First, he Tweeted an apology to his 284,000 follower, by tweeting: "Was inarticulate re[garding] how women should ask for raise. Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias".

Many took this comment to mean effectively the same as his last clanger, one tweeter asking, "So you're just saying 'trust the system that created the structural inequity' in a slightly different way?" while another simply asked, "Inarticulate, or wrong?".

Nadella's next effort appeared four hours later in the form of a blog, in which he may have followed the tweeter's advice, upgrading his answer from "inarticulate" to, indeed, "wrong".

"I answered that question completely wrong," he wrote. "Without a doubt, I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap.

"I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it's deserved, Maria's advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask."

This time, Nadella was met with such feedback as "Terrible apology" and "Get someone outside the Redmond bubble to advise you".

Meanwhile solutions architect and women in IT advocate Aimee Maree commented, "Actually, if Satya wanted to he could order a pay review and correct the pay gap - that's how he makes up for the mistake".