{"id":1547,"date":"2014-10-09T18:04:51","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T01:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2014-10-10T00:29:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T07:29:25","slug":"this-is-what-we-face-when-we-try-to-negotiate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/09\/this-is-what-we-face-when-we-try-to-negotiate\/","title":{"rendered":"this is what we face when we try to negotiate"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the points that I discuss in “The Mid-Career Donut Hole”<\/a> is that women are penalized for negotiating salary. \u00a0Women who attempt to negotiate are viewed as greedy, whereas there is no negative association for men who negotiate. \u00a0There have been many attempts at strategies for ameliorating this negative association, although the research is mixed about whether they are effective in doing so.<\/p>\n

Today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave another example of how difficult it is for women to negotiate. \u00a0When asked at GHC14<\/a> about his advice for women who are uncomfortable asking for a raise, he said this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Nadella, we can’t ask for a raise, we can’t negotiate our salary. \u00a0We just have to have faith in the system, which is the same system that has already given us a pay gap and an attrition rate more than twice that of men.<\/p>\n

That answer is not sufficient. \u00a0As an industry, we have to do better.<\/p>\n

Updated just after midnight: I see that, about the same time I posted this, Nadella sent an apology out to Microsoft employees<\/a>. \u00a0I’m glad that Nadella, eight hours after saying such a thing and four hours after trying to pass off his original answer as “inarticulate”, apologized to his employees and acknowledged that his answer was “completely wrong”. \u00a0The apology is excellent. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

However, it doesn’t address the basic problem that women face when negotiating: the immediate gut response is “it’s not\u00a0really about asking for a raise”. \u00a0It took the backlash \u00a0for it to be acknowledged that trusting the system is not the right answer. \u00a0In the vast majority of negotiations, there isn’t an audience watching and live-tweeting. \u00a0The gut reaction is the one that sticks, and results in women being penalized for\u00a0trying to negotiate. \u00a0It’s still not enough for women to “just ask” for a raise.<\/em><\/p>\n

And so, I say again:\u00a0That answer is not sufficient. \u00a0As an industry, we have to do better.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the points that I discuss in “The Mid-Career Donut Hole” is that women are penalized for negotiating salary. \u00a0Women who attempt to negotiate are viewed as greedy, whereas there is no negative association for men who negotiate. \u00a0There have been many attempts at strategies for ameliorating this negative association, although the research is … Continue reading this is what we face when we try to negotiate<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1552,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}