Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Two Quotes

From Salon recently:
“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” [Microsoft CEO Satya] Nadella said in conversation with Dr. Maria Klawe, a member of the Microsoft Board, Harvey Mudd College president and computer scientist.

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

And from Marketplace last year:
Sarah Lacy, founder of tech news site Pando Daily* ... said the BART strike exacerbated what she sees as a philosophical divide in the Bay Area. “People in the tech industry feel like life is a meritocracy. You work really hard, you build something and you create something, which is sort of directly opposite to unions.” 

Both the tech and financial sector have embraced the idea that economic rewards are directly correlated to work and worth. It's a strange mixture of efficient market theorem and social Darwinism, often with more than a bit of Randianism. I suspect that Nadella and Lacy have so internalized this worldview that they no longer have any idea how they sound to the general public.




* To those of you following the pension scandals: yeah, that Pando.

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