It’s been a year for prominent CEOs to insert their feet firmly into their mouths. The latest red-faced back-tracking Twitter (News - Alert) walk of shame is from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who spoke on Thursday at the Grace Hopper Celebration, which is (ostensibly) organized to celebrate women in the tech field.  His faux-pas happened in response to an attendee question about how women should ask for raises in the tech field. Nadella surprised the audience – which reacted with audible gasps - by saying they shouldn’t.

“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” Nadella said. “That might be one of the initial ‘super powers,’ that quite frankly, women (who) don’t ask for a raise have. It’s good karma. It will come back.”

Nadella’s comment was made during the course of a panel discussion with Dr. Maria Klawe, a computer scientists and member of the Microsoft (News - Alert) Board as well as president of Harvey Mudd College. Klawe stepped in after Nadella’s puzzling advice to save the moment.

“First of all, do your homework…know what the appropriate salary is,” said Klawe, according to ReadWrite. “Then role play, sit down with someone you really trust, and practice asking them for a raise.”

In an era of continued scrutiny of pay discrepancies between men and women, and advice to women to “lean in” to the tech industry more (thanks to Facebook’s (News - Alert) Sheryl Sandberg), Nadella’s advice is rather poorly timed.  The much-discussed gap between male and female pay is reportedly even worse in Silicon Valley than across other industry averages, according to a 2014 study by Joint Venture Silicon Valley.

Social media quickly exploded with confusion, anger and snark after the event.

Thanks goodness Maria Klawe is there to give women practical advice on asking for a raise, after the male speaker failed. #ghc14 — P. Oppenheimer (@priscillaoppy) October 9, 2014

Microsoft CEO advice for women who are uncomfortable asking for raise/promotion is "trust that the hr system will reward you later"? #GHC14         — Cristina Stancu (@CristinaStancu) October 9, 2014

Thursday evening, Nadella apologized via a memo on Microsoft’s Web site. He stated that he answered the question "completely wrong" and that he believes "men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it's deserved, Maria's advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask."

Nadella may be forgiven quickly, as he has a reputation for being one of the more egalitarian Silicon Valley CEOs, despite the fact that a recent analysis found that only 29 percent of Microsoft’s general workforce is female.