Nadella’s ‘karma-gate’ flap launched a discussion of diversity in tech: Here are 5 provocative responses

22 Jan Nadella’s ‘karma-gate’ flap launched a discussion of diversity in tech: Here are 5 provocative responses

Freshly appointed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was fairly new to the national spotlight when he took the stage at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing event in October.

That’s when he suggested women shouldn’t ask for raises, but rather “have faith in the system.”

Needless to say, Nadella was about to get the taste of his first foot-in-mouth moment.

Nadella’s comment’s sparked a national conversation and shined a spotlight on how vastly underrepresented minorities and women are in technology jobs.

According to statistics released by Microsoft, women make up 29 percent of the company’s employees, an increase from 24 percent last year.

The backlash to Nadella’s comments was immediate and prolonged, as everyone from bloggers to civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson weighed in.

Nadella, Microsoft and other technology companies spent the rest of the year responding to questions about diversity in their workforces.

In the end, this would prove to be Nadella’s first major public relations blunder and a defining moment in his first year at the helm of Microsoft.

Here’s what Nadella said to start it all. He was asked what advice he would give women who aren’t comfortable asking for a raises during the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing event. He began his response by citing something a colleague had once told him:

“‘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 a raise, but knowing and having faith the system would actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that I think that 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. Because somebody’s going to know, that’s the kind of person that I want to trust; that’s the kind of person I want to really give more responsibility to.”

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