Hey ladies, listen to Microsoft CEO for career advice: "Don't ask for a raise."

MysticSang'ha · Oct 9, 2014

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella To Women: Don't Ask For A Raise, Trust Karma - Business Insider

"Trust karma." :biglaugh:

The only way I got a raise in my corporate sales management and marketing VP position was by heading into the owner's office, paying for lunch, and providing the numbers to show how much production I've helped to create, thereby earning me ___% increase in compensation.

Owner was convinced and paid me more. There was no way I was getting a raise if I didn't ask for it and was prepared to defend my reasoning as to why.

lewisnotmiller · Oct 9, 2014

Yeah, that's bad advice, flat out.

Funnily enough, in certain situations or environments, her approach is sensible, but my experience is that these involve one of two things;

1) Small companies, or teams where the person making the call on the pay rise has a combination of autonomy in pay decisions, and a non-restrictive salaries budget. This would account for about 1 in every million circumstances, I suppose, but they exist, if usually momentarily.
(I worked for a team that had no revenue targets for a year, and it impacted on decision making, both for better and for worse)

2) Industries where poaching of staff by competitors is common, and valuable staff are proactively identified as a means of talent retention.
From what I've seen, HR departments are great at finding ways to look at job 'more holistically' and offer other 'perks'. IN some cases, these are real. Flexible hours or work locations for example. IN many, they are fool's gold, such as employee awards or title changes.

She mentioned about having faith the system will pay you what you're worth. That's just blatant crap. Better to look at the track record of the industry and system you are involved with, and use that to judge the best course of action.

99/100 the best way to get paid what you are worth is to make sure you KNOW what you're worth to the company, very calmly ask for it, and have some brief and simple measures to demonstrate why you are asking for it.

This appears to be more of an issue for women than men, but I'd also add that I've seen a cultural aspect to it. I've worked with various cultural groups, and some are less likely to be 'demanding', and are too polite/humble for their own good.

dawny0826 · Oct 9, 2014

Working for a non-profit organization - it's a genuine blessing if there's budget for a merit increase. The beauty of it that if it's not in the budget - no one gets a merit increase.

In my work-world, I work for and mostly with women.

In response to the OP, I'm of the opinion that merit increase systems should be established for the purpose of rewarding expectations, exceeded or for important milestones. When formal and structured goal-setting and development systems are in place - merit increase is the reward for achievement.

There's no inequality allowed in the equation, when those who qualify are rewarded via the same increase percentage, based upon tenure. Pay rate is assigned to a position with perhaps a variance for education and experience.

Shadow Wolf · Oct 9, 2014

Another reason I hate the pseudo-religious approach to Capitalism that our nation worships. Of course the system works, just as long as you ignore ever shortcoming that the government was forced to addressed and the ones still around. But then again, it's probably easy to believe that it really does when you are very wealthy and have never had to worry about your sex, gender, color, or other arbitrary things constructing barriers that are difficult if not impossible to overcome.

lewisnotmiller · Oct 9, 2014

dawny0826 said:
Working for a non-profit organization - it's a genuine blessing if there's budget for a merit increase. The beauty of it that if it's not in the budget - no one gets a merit increase.

In my work-world, I work for and mostly with women.

In response to the OP, I'm of the opinion that merit increase systems should be established for the purpose of rewarding expectations, exceeded or for important milestones. When formal and structured goal-setting and development systems are in place - merit increase is the reward for achievement.

There's no inequality allowed in the equation, when those who qualify are rewarded via the same increase percentage, based upon tenure. Pay rate is assigned to a position with perhaps a variance for education and experience.

I might be heading OT, so let me know and I'll desist...

I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly, but you seem to be advocating tenure-based pay rises, with formal qualifications, etc as modifiers to the 'normal' pay rise offered?

I would agree that it's a model which works effectively in terms of reducing gender or cultural bias, but I think it would be problematic in competitive industry.
It can succeed in not-for-profits, education, nursing, etc, if most organizations within the industry conform to a similar structure. But in a purely competetive industry, published bandings and the like would just make it incredibly easy for my competitors to cherry pick staff, or adjust business models.

Even in industries using this sort of banding strategy, it commonly stops at a certain level of the organisation (ie. doesn't include C-level execs). So if we rely on these sorts of strategies, we are still not addressing glass-ceiling issues, I think.

As I said, not 100% I'm understanding you right, so apologies if I've missed the mark.

Alceste · Oct 9, 2014

I've never asked for a raise, exactly, but I've given notice because I'm sick of a job and accepted a raise as incentive to stay on, twice. But I think asking for a raise is totally fine. How else will you ever get one? Imo it's probably easier to look for another job that pays better, and when you find one, give your employer a chance to make you a better offer. If not, leave. Win-win, and you don't have to buy lunch for some jerk who makes five times times as much as you do, or prepare a PowerPoint presentation summing up your virtues.

lewisnotmiller · Oct 10, 2014

I've been unable to avoid managing people a few times.
If ANYONE wandered in with a Power-point presentation for ANY reason, I'd slap them upside their head. Unless it was funny.

A few simple KPIs are the best way to go, and they don't need to be officially sanctioned ones. They just need to be relevant. My industry, we were always measured on chargeability to clients. This was fine, until my last promotion.

I was made principal consultant for a state, and my charge rate and KPI went up. Fair enough. But they started using me as chief firefighter. Consultant X stuffed up, so lewisnotmiller got sent in to fix it. Client was angry, so lewisnotmiller is promised for free.

(Which is all good. Customer service is my middle name. Or it would be if 'John' didn't get there first...)

Amazingly, my charge rate plummeted. But I kept track of my utilization. Days clients asked for me specifically, etc, regardless of who was paying. It is a nice thing to have in your back pocket if you think the OFFICIAL KPI(s) are going to show you in a bad light, especially if the people doing your pay review are not intimately familiar with your work.

Oh, and in terms of finding a better paying job, then giving your employer a chance to match, no issues at all, as long as you're actually willing to leave. I've seen brinksmanship go horribly wrong playing that game.

(Just to be clear, not suggesting for a second you were playing games or whatever, Alceste. Sounds like you were quite willing to leave, in which case it's all fair to my mind. I did the same thing once.)

dawny0826 · Oct 10, 2014

lewisnotmiller said:
I might be heading OT, so let me know and I'll desist...

I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly, but you seem to be advocating tenure-based pay rises, with formal qualifications, etc as modifiers to the 'normal' pay rise offered?

I would agree that it's a model which works effectively in terms of reducing gender or cultural bias, but I think it would be problematic in competitive industry.
It can succeed in not-for-profits, education, nursing, etc, if most organizations within the industry conform to a similar structure. But in a purely competetive industry, published bandings and the like would just make it incredibly easy for my competitors to cherry pick staff, or adjust business models.

Even in industries using this sort of banding strategy, it commonly stops at a certain level of the organisation (ie. doesn't include C-level execs). So if we rely on these sorts of strategies, we are still not addressing glass-ceiling issues, I think.

As I said, not 100% I'm understanding you right, so apologies if I've missed the mark.

I advocate performance-based reward system as part of a structured development/goal-oriented system. I don't object to tenure, as an example, influencing the percentage of merit increase. My expectation would be that anyone of that tenure could qualify for the same percentage of increase, based upon their contributions into the a performance based system.

I advocate for pay-rates that are industry-competitive and represent qualification and expectations.

9-10ths_Penguin · Oct 10, 2014

lewisnotmiller said:
Oh, and in terms of finding a better paying job, then giving your employer a chance to match, no issues at all, as long as you're actually willing to leave. I've seen brinksmanship go horribly wrong playing that game.

(Just to be clear, not suggesting for a second you were playing games or whatever, Alceste. Sounds like you were quite willing to leave, in which case it's all fair to my mind. I did the same thing once.)

I woukd expect that this approach would backfire more often than it would work. Savvy companies realize that people usually don't leave jobs over money - it tends to be about deeper issues like whether the employee finds the job meaningful.

The common wisdom is that an employee who is threatening to leave already has one foot out thd door, and giving them a raise won't keep them long term, since more money doesn't actually addrss the reasons why a person would want to leave.

MysticSang'ha · Oct 10, 2014

I'm curious if anyone read the link.

The CEO of Microsoft is a man.

This advice was given to a room full of women IT workers. The advice is specifically for women.

He also mentioned a woman having "super powers" as helping her getting a raise and getting noticed by HR. Get noticed, and then everything else will work out, according to him.

Maria Klawe stood up after the CEO's speech to give advice to the women in the auditorium the practical ways of approaching HR to ask for a raise: doing your homework, role-playing the conversation, etc.

Weird weird advice from the CEO. Trust karma. Especially in a STEM field where the wage gape and the inequity of filled positions are higher than the national average.

lewisnotmiller · Oct 10, 2014

MysticSang'ha said:
I'm curious if anyone read the link.

Yep, but I'll admit it was a quick once over, as I was posting from work.

MysticSang'ha said:
The CEO of Microsoft is a man.

Which I didn't cotton on to. :facepalm:

Sure, you might think the fact he was referred to as a 'he' was a dead giveaway, or the massive photo of him, but I just...errr...well, his name sounds...I mean...

:shrug:

Sorry!! But I promise I read it. I've now read it twice.

MysticSang'ha said:
This advice was given to a room full of women IT workers. The advice is specifically for women.

Well...I'd be interested in whether he'd say something similar to a room full of <insert minority group here> to be honest.
It's bad advice.

I suspect just HOW bad it is depends on how different you are to the prevailing management demographics and culture in a company (which are not always the same as the prevailing demographics of the company as a whole, of course)

MysticSang'ha said:
He also mentioned a woman having "super powers" as helping her getting a raise and getting noticed by HR. Get noticed, and then everything else will work out, according to him.

I found this a little bizarre, rather than bad. Or maybe I should say bizarre AS WELL as bad. What the frig is he talking about? The prevailing management culture of the place is determinant of how you get noticed, in my experience, at least assuming we're talking about positive notice.

And once you are noticed and you get a pat on the head/back, wouldn't it make sense to speak up firmly in support of yourself?

MysticSang'ha said:
Maria Klawe stood up after the CEO's speech to give advice to the women in the auditorium the practical ways of approaching HR to ask for a raise: doing your homework, role-playing the conversation, etc.

Much better. Mind you...is it common in the States for people to be asking HR for a raise rather than a line manager? That is unusual here in my experience. I wonder if direct management of a person impacts on discrimination (positively or negatively). I have no idea.

MysticSang'ha said:
Weird weird advice from the CEO. Trust karma. Especially in a STEM field where the wage gape and the inequity of filled positions are higher than the national average.

Some might cynically suggest this was self-serving, given that he's encouraging a group of employees historically reluctant to assert themselves for pay rises to continue to not assert themselves for pay rises, and be good little soldiers.

MysticSang'ha · Oct 10, 2014

lewisnotmiller said:
Yep, but I'll admit it was a quick once over, as I was posting from work.

Which I didn't cotton on to.
Sure, you might think the fact he was referred to as a 'he' was a dead giveaway, or the massive photo of him, but I just...errr...well, his name sounds...I mean...

Sorry!! But I promise I read it. I've now read it twice.

No worries. I've given article links a simple glance and posted too.

Well...I'd be interested in whether he'd say something similar to a room full of <insert minority group here> to be honest.
It's bad advice.

I suspect just HOW bad it is depends on how different you are to the prevailing management demographics and culture in a company (which are not always the same as the prevailing demographics of the company as a whole, of course)

Interesting point. Yes, I think that's something to consider.

I found this a little bizarre, rather than bad. Or maybe I should say bizarre AS WELL as bad. What the frig is he talking about? The prevailing management culture of the place is determinant of how you get noticed, in my experience, at least assuming we're talking about positive notice.

And once you are noticed and you get a pat on the head/back, wouldn't it make sense to speak up firmly in support of yourself?

My thoughts as well.

Much better. Mind you...is it common in the States for people to be asking HR for a raise rather than a line manager? That is unusual here in my experience. I wonder if direct management of a person impacts on discrimination (positively or negatively). I have no idea.

In my experience, that's how things are done. It's why asking for a raise is such a huge deal here in the States. Men and women alike will relate to the nerve-wracking experience of walking into HR and/or management and defending their request for a pay raise.

Granted, many companies will give annual raises to the entire workforce, assuming there has been growth in productivity. But the raise for each employee is across the board, and is typically a $.05 increase per hour. If one of the employees feels as if their time or productivity has helped the department and/or company overall more than that, it's advised that the employee himself or herself request a raise.

Some might cynically suggest this was self-serving, given that he's encouraging a group of employees historically reluctant to assert themselves for pay rises to continue to not assert themselves for pay rises, and be good little soldiers.

As cynical as I am, I'm actually giving him the benefit of the doubt on his intentions. I think that he is speaking from a perspective of women asserting themselves without being "bossy" or "******". Cultural conditioning, rather than malicious intent, IMO.

Alceste · Oct 10, 2014

MysticSang'ha said:
I'm curious if anyone read the link.

The CEO of Microsoft is a man.

This advice was given to a room full of women IT workers. The advice is specifically for women.

He also mentioned a woman having "super powers" as helping her getting a raise and getting noticed by HR. Get noticed, and then everything else will work out, according to him.

Maria Klawe stood up after the CEO's speech to give advice to the women in the auditorium the practical ways of approaching HR to ask for a raise: doing your homework, role-playing the conversation, etc.

Weird weird advice from the CEO. Trust karma. Especially in a STEM field where the wage gape and the inequity of filled positions are higher than the national average.

Guilty as charged. I've read it now. Stupidest advice ever. Goes to show that "male allies" of feminism who still subscribe to a gender binary idea of how people should behave aren't really allies. I just learned that at the job I quit.

dawny0826 · Oct 10, 2014

lewisnotmiller said:
I might be heading OT, so let me know and I'll desist...

I think I started heading that way first.

First, to comment on the actual article - I'm not sure what to make of his statement. It's confusing to me. I'm curious as to whether or not he's referring to "karma" by way of getting back what you put in or something entirely different.

And that's what got me thinking about my experiences. I've never been in a position to where I'd need to ask for a raise as a merit increase system has always been built into the performance, development and/or tenure reward systems with every company or organization that I've worked for.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly, but you seem to be advocating tenure-based pay rises, with formal qualifications, etc as modifiers to the 'normal' pay rise offered?

I support a performance based merit raise system, but, have seen first hand how tenure with a company may contribute to the percentage/amount of a merit raise.

I would agree that it's a model which works effectively in terms of reducing gender or cultural bias, but I think it would be problematic in competitive industry.

I don't think it's problematic in a competitive industry as pay for any position would be industry competitive. A man and a woman hired for the same role would both make the same salary.

Merit increase would hinge upon performance. Whether or you not you receive the maximum merit increase is contingent upon whether or not you met goals.

It can succeed in not-for-profits, education, nursing, etc, if most organizations within the industry conform to a similar structure. But in a purely competetive industry, published bandings and the like would just make it incredibly easy for my competitors to cherry pick staff, or adjust business models.

Even in industries using this sort of banding strategy, it commonly stops at a certain level of the organisation (ie. doesn't include C-level execs). So if we rely on these sorts of strategies, we are still not addressing glass-ceiling issues, I think.

I can only opine based upon what I've experienced and understand.

Kilgore Trout · Oct 10, 2014

Not asking for a raise is, hands down, the flat-out worst advice you could possibly give someone regarding getting a raise. It flies in the face of all common-sense and experience.

Shadow Wolf · Oct 11, 2014

MysticSang'ha said:
I'm curious if anyone read the link.

The CEO of Microsoft is a man.

This advice was given to a room full of women IT workers. The advice is specifically for women.

He also mentioned a woman having "super powers" as helping her getting a raise and getting noticed by HR. Get noticed, and then everything else will work out, according to him.

Maria Klawe stood up after the CEO's speech to give advice to the women in the auditorium the practical ways of approaching HR to ask for a raise: doing your homework, role-playing the conversation, etc.

Weird weird advice from the CEO. Trust karma. Especially in a STEM field where the wage gape and the inequity of filled positions are higher than the national average.

I read it, wondered how someone who is supposed to be that smart, who is has gotten that far ahead, can be that stupid. But he did apologize.
BBC News - Microsoft's Nadella sorry for women's pay comments
But he also beliefs in good karma, and apparently has faith in a highly impersonal system, so how much further does his apology go beyond his words?

dust1n · Oct 12, 2014

Kilgore Trout said:
Not asking for a raise is, hands down, the flat-out worst advice you could possibly give someone regarding getting a raise. It flies in the face of all common-sense and experience.

Tis what I was thinking. I suspect being a CEO of Microsoft sets one off so far from the reality of the many Microsoft workers, that saying something like that is not quite all that surprising, since I don't expect any boss to really sympathize with the plight of their workers, if they were even capable of doing so in the first place.

Alceste · Oct 13, 2014

Shadow Wolf said:
I read it, wondered how someone who is supposed to be that smart, who is has gotten that far ahead, can be that stupid. But he did apologize.
BBC News - Microsoft's Nadella sorry for women's pay comments
But he also beliefs in good karma, and apparently has faith in a highly impersonal system, so how much further does his apology go beyond his words?

Glad to see he's come to his senses.

MysticSang'ha · Oct 13, 2014

dust1n said:
Tis what I was thinking. I suspect being a CEO of Microsoft sets one off so far from the reality of the many Microsoft workers, that saying something like that is not quite all that surprising, since I don't expect any boss to really sympathize with the plight of their workers, if they were even capable of doing so in the first place.

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Hey ladies, listen to Microsoft CEO for career advice: "Don't ask for a raise."

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