Bloomberg reports Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella created a controversy with remarks made while onstage at a conference on women in technology.

In response to a question about what he would tell women who are hesitant to ask for a raise, Nadella said, “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. And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that quite frankly women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back, because somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person that I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to.”

“I answered that question completely wrong,” Nadella later wrote in an email to employees.