I’m sure most of you have heard the rumblings and rage over the comments of Microsoft chief executive, Satya Nadella, when he was asked by an attendee at a women in tech conference, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, about how to ask for a raise, when he replied;

 “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.” 

He went on to imply that it is not good “karma” to ask for a raise. Ok, now I am going to rage for a moment; seriously a CEO of a major corporation is talking about letting karma and the system determine a woman’s future. I am sure that is exactly how he has handled his rise to the top.

“That’s good karma. It will come back. That’s the kind of person that I want to trust, that I want to give more responsibility to.”

Hell yes he wants to give more responsibility to those that don’t ask for raises, he can pile more work on them and not have to pay for it. Isn’t that just good CEO economics; getting more, for less and adding to the shareholders value. He has since been backtracking fast and furiously from that statement, but you know the truth now about how he really views his team, no matter how much spin his PR people put on it.

In one of my very early blog posts here at Random and Rhyme I wrote about “Money” and some of my ups and downs with it, but in it I also commented about women and negotiations an excerpt below;

“I read the Get Rich Slowly Blog to keep me focused on paying off those debts and building that emergency fund. But there was an article recently on the site that caught my attention; also about women and money, Money Mythbuster: Women Don’t Negotiate by staff writer April Dykman. She writes about her experience with trying to negotiate and the results she ended up with, as well as provides some links to studies about women and men and their salary disparity. Particularly disturbing was the negative effect on a woman who negotiates her starting salary vs a man who does.”

““If a woman negotiates her starting salary, the employer might hold it against her. According to a 2006 study, when a woman negotiates her salary, both men and women are less likely to want to work with or hire her. The negative effect was more than 5.5 times greater for women who negotiated than for men.””

I learned in my early twenties that I needed to negotiate my starting salary, if for no other reason than, because it affects what you make in the long run. I also know I have lost out on at least one position because of my professional request for a better starting salary. But you know what? Not getting that job, where I wasn’t going to be valued led me to finding a better position, in a better organization and at an even better salary. So keep asking ladies because no one is going to pay you what your worth unless you assert and value yourself. And the organizations or companies that do not value a smart, assertive, contributor who professionally asks to be paid commensurate with what value she is bringing to the organization are going to suffer because they are afraid or too intimidated to hire the person that will likely help them the most.

Do you negotiate your salary or anything else like vacation time or just a better price on that couch you’re buying?