Though the feminist wage gap is mostly bullshit, it is true that where salaries are largely based on what you can negotiate, women are worse at asking for pay rises.
I work in technical sales. It's what you might call a macho environment. Most of the sales staff are men, but we have a few girls too. (By the way, a lot of Game concepts are applicable to sales too - if you want to make a lot of money, are good with people, and don't mind hard work and lots of crazy drunken corporate events, technical sales is worth considering. It's a shitload more fun than your average office drone job, and the financial rewards are there for the taking.)
The thing about sales is that you're expected to always be selling - not just to your customers, but to your own company too. By that, I mean that things like your compensation package are always up for negotiation, and if you don't ask you will not receive. There's always a lot more flexibility on pay in sales than there is in admin type jobs.
When I was a young exec, new to the company, I was in the CEO's office one day when he had to nip out for a few minutes. He had a copy of the sales team payroll report on his desk, so naturally I read it. Being young and naive, I was surprised to see how much variation there was, and not necessarily in the way you'd expect.
One girl was a star performer at the time, she was regularly pulling in millions of pounds in revenue and hundreds of K profit a month. She'd been with the company for years and her basic salary was £19k. I was just out of school and my basic was nearly £10k higher. We were all on the same commission scheme so the only reason she wasn't earning more was that she never asked for it.
One guy was on £45k basic, and he was just an average performer. But he obviously asked for the money, so fair play to him.
Asking for a rise is risky though, and women are risk averse. There's no harm in asking, but if you get a rise and then fail to hit your target, you can feel the prickly sensation of crosshairs on your back.
Women are also more likely to be afraid of being told "no", because they tend to take everything personally. Whereas you can tell a salesman "no", call him a cunt, and tell him to get the fuck out of your office, and there probably won't be any hard feelings. I worked for one guy who liked carrying a baseball bat around the office when he was doing the rounds of his sales staff. We all thought it was funny.
I had a better offer that I was seriously considering a few years back, so I went to the sales director and talked to him about it. This was just after the 2008 financial crisis and the business was putting out word that we were lucky to have jobs and shouldn't expect any pay increases above 2%.
He came back to me with a 34% pay rise. I think I kept my poker face on, but I damn near fell out of my chair. I felt like putting on a mask and carrying a bag marked "loot" as I walked to my car at the end of the day, but then I realised the sales director drove a brand new Aston Martin Vanquish and I only had a 5 year old Mercedes C-class.
34% was a lot to me, but a pittance to the board of directors.
TL;DR version - Nadella is talking bollocks, but what do you expect a CEO to say? If you're good at what you do, you can always ask for more money. Having "faith" is good advice for saints, but for us regular people cash is better.
I work in technical sales. It's what you might call a macho environment. Most of the sales staff are men, but we have a few girls too. (By the way, a lot of Game concepts are applicable to sales too - if you want to make a lot of money, are good with people, and don't mind hard work and lots of crazy drunken corporate events, technical sales is worth considering. It's a shitload more fun than your average office drone job, and the financial rewards are there for the taking.)
The thing about sales is that you're expected to always be selling - not just to your customers, but to your own company too. By that, I mean that things like your compensation package are always up for negotiation, and if you don't ask you will not receive. There's always a lot more flexibility on pay in sales than there is in admin type jobs.
When I was a young exec, new to the company, I was in the CEO's office one day when he had to nip out for a few minutes. He had a copy of the sales team payroll report on his desk, so naturally I read it. Being young and naive, I was surprised to see how much variation there was, and not necessarily in the way you'd expect.
One girl was a star performer at the time, she was regularly pulling in millions of pounds in revenue and hundreds of K profit a month. She'd been with the company for years and her basic salary was £19k. I was just out of school and my basic was nearly £10k higher. We were all on the same commission scheme so the only reason she wasn't earning more was that she never asked for it.
One guy was on £45k basic, and he was just an average performer. But he obviously asked for the money, so fair play to him.
Asking for a rise is risky though, and women are risk averse. There's no harm in asking, but if you get a rise and then fail to hit your target, you can feel the prickly sensation of crosshairs on your back.
Women are also more likely to be afraid of being told "no", because they tend to take everything personally. Whereas you can tell a salesman "no", call him a cunt, and tell him to get the fuck out of your office, and there probably won't be any hard feelings. I worked for one guy who liked carrying a baseball bat around the office when he was doing the rounds of his sales staff. We all thought it was funny.
I had a better offer that I was seriously considering a few years back, so I went to the sales director and talked to him about it. This was just after the 2008 financial crisis and the business was putting out word that we were lucky to have jobs and shouldn't expect any pay increases above 2%.
He came back to me with a 34% pay rise. I think I kept my poker face on, but I damn near fell out of my chair. I felt like putting on a mask and carrying a bag marked "loot" as I walked to my car at the end of the day, but then I realised the sales director drove a brand new Aston Martin Vanquish and I only had a 5 year old Mercedes C-class.
34% was a lot to me, but a pittance to the board of directors.
TL;DR version - Nadella is talking bollocks, but what do you expect a CEO to say? If you're good at what you do, you can always ask for more money. Having "faith" is good advice for saints, but for us regular people cash is better.