Microsoft CEO Dude: Chicks Don't Need Raises, Just Karma

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is a man, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know how sometimes it's hard to be a woman. Especially a woman who has a job for a living and, as is the case in pretty much every industry, doesn't make as much money as her fellow penis-having colleagues. But the Bro-E-O has some terrific advice for women who are trying to get ahead and get those bigger paychecks (so they can buy SHOOOOOOZ! of course):  don't even bother. 

“For women who aren’t comfortable asking for a raise, what’s your advice for them?” Maria Klawe, a computer scientist who is a member of Microsoft’s board of directors, asked.

“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” he told Klawe (who, presumably, was screaming inside). [...]

“That might be one of the initial ‘super powers’ that, quite frankly, women (who) don’t ask for a raise have,” he said. “It’s good karma. It will come back.”

This super awesome advice was doled out at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where Nadella clearly understood his audience of women, in computing, who do it for the love of computing and do not even care about money because why would they? Money is for men (and Admiral Grace Hopper, by the way, would have kicked him in the balls).

Of course he later "clarified" and "apologized" because when he said women should be happy to be paid in karma instead of cash, he meant to say it differently. And he full-on totes hearts the ladies and equality and all that good crap. Of course! He released a statement saying, "I answered that question completely wrong" (gee, ya think?) and "If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask." So please disregard that entire prior discussion in which he advised that a woman who wants a raise should just, like, not. Instead, use that vaginal superpower to hope and believe and maybe pray to Gaia or whatever.

So, ladies, let's add "find your inner karma superpower" to the list of things we can do to make ourselvesjuuuuuuuuustright in the workforce. We must dress the part: feminine and pretty, of course, because men enjoy women who know how to show off their figures. But nottoomuch, because then we are basically shoving our ladyparts right in men's faces, and that is very distracting for them, and they will have to fire us! 

We must also Lean In^TMand be aggressive, B-E aggressive! because we'd get exactly what we want if we just learned how to ask for it like men do. Except that we should NOT do that, because bosses do not like it when ladies say, "Hey, um, about my paycheck?" Also, that kind of attitude and line of questioning is pushy and mercurial and demonstrates "patterns" that are unpleasant and also very distracting for the "likable and funny" and "charming" and "class act" man colleagues, who then have to punch all the things because of how pushy ladies make them so mad and then they cannot be class act charming funny likable, and it is all the mean lady's fault. Grrrrr!

Or, just a thought, maybe it's all bullshit. Maybe the super insightful superpower advice -- from dudes like Microsoft's CEO and those very few women who've actually managed to dress just right and ask just right and behave just right -- is irrelevant. Because this is America, damnit, and in America, women can be nothing less than perfect. And perfection has many definitions, and they often contradict each other, but whose fault is that? Whose problem is that?

Maybe Nadella is right. The best hope for women who have the audacity to want the same respect and success and income as men is the karma thing. If we wear the right clothes and punch walls the right "class act" way and say "how high, sir?" when we are told to jump, we'll bank enough good karma that it'll all come back to us eventually. And in the next life, we'll get to be men.

[ Yahoo ]