Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella apologized last night about the controversal comments he made about gender pay gap at a conference this week.
Maria Klawe, the president of the Harvey Mudd College, interviewed Nadella in front of a live audience in Phoenix, Arizona about his thoughts on women, specifically, what they should do if they are not comfortable asking for a pay raise.
"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," Nadella responded, adding, "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 is going to know that is the kind of person that I want to trust."
The CEO, who was speaking at a conference that calls itself the world's biggest gathering of female tecnologists, took back what he said today after receiving a lot of backlash.
"Maria asked me what advice I would offer women who are not comfortable asking for pay raises. I answered that question completely wrong," Nadella says in a statement. "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...if you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask."
Klawe says that Nadella comment was one of the "very few things" they disagreed about at the conference.
