Charles B. Wang was never the kind of guy who played by the rules of the Silicon Valley elite. Honestly, he wasn't even in Silicon Valley. He built his empire, Computer Associates (now CA Technologies), on Long Island, and he did it with a specific brand of aggression that made the rest of the tech world flinch. When you look back at any Charles B. Wang interview, you don't find the polished, media-trained jargon of a modern-day CEO. You find a man who was deeply blunt, fiercely loyal to his family, and unapologetic about his "old commerce" values.
Most people today remember the headlines—the accounting scandals that rocked CA in the early 2000s or the messy saga of trying to build a new arena for the New York Islanders. But there is a massive gap between the public "villain" persona and the man who sat down with reporters at Newsday or CRN. To understand him, you have to look at the philosophy he preached when the cameras were off.
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The "Heart" Over the MBA
One of the most jarring things Wang ever said in an interview with CRN was his take on hiring. He basically told them, "I look at the heart. I want guys who have it. Everything else you can teach."
That wasn't just a feel-good quote for a brochure. He meant it literally. For years, having an MBA was actually a disadvantage if you wanted to work for Charles Wang. He notoriously rejected candidates with advanced business degrees, preferring people with "street smarts" and raw sales experience. He didn't want people who had been taught how to manage; he wanted people who knew how to close a deal.
This "heart" philosophy extended to his acquisitions. CA grew by swallowing up more than 50 other software firms. But Wang's method was brutal. He would often fire the entire management team and the sales force of the acquired company immediately. Why? Because he believed they were "poisoned" by the culture of the failing company he just bought. He only trusted his own people—the ones he had raised in his own "paternalistic" culture.
Why the Islanders Ownership Was "Carefree"
If you want to see the human side of the Charles B. Wang interview archives, you have to look at his time with the New York Islanders. He bought the team in 2000, allegedly after having only ever attended one hockey game in his entire life. It sounds like a joke, right? A billionaire buying a pro sports team as a whim.
But former Islanders players and staff recall a man who was almost "carefree" about the money. There's a famous story from Mike Milbury about a dinner where Wang nonchalantly mentioned he'd signed a player for $2.5 million just because it would make the team happy.
"Charles could be the money didn't matter... he wanted the things to go smoothly. It was carefree in many ways for him." — Mike Milbury
He viewed the Islanders as a community asset for Long Island, not a profit center. This drove the "investment community" crazy. They wanted a cold-blooded businessman, but Wang was acting like a benevolent (and sometimes stubborn) patriarch. He stayed in the fight to keep the team on Long Island for years, even when it cost him hundreds of millions of dollars.
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The "Teach a Man to Fish" Philosophy
Perhaps the most impactful thing Wang ever discussed was the founding of Smile Train. This is where the "expert" version of Charles Wang really shines through. He didn't just want to give money to charity; he wanted to apply "best business practices" to philanthropy.
In various interviews, Wang and his co-founder Brian Mullaney talked about the "colonial model" of charity—where Western doctors fly into a poor country, do 50 surgeries, take photos, and leave. Wang hated that. He called it "imperialistic."
Instead, he insisted on the "teach a man to fish" model.
- Train local doctors in their own countries.
- Provide them with the tools and software (which he helped develop).
- Pay them to do the surgeries.
This made Smile Train incredibly efficient. At its peak, they were doing 110,000 operations a year with only 42 employees. He treated donors like "shareholders" and wasn't afraid to fire people in the non-profit if they weren't performing. He famously said he didn't care where their heart was if they weren't getting the job done. It was the same aggressive, results-oriented Charles Wang from the software world, but focused on fixing cleft palates.
The Shadow of the SEC and the "Creative Accounting" Labels
We can't talk about his legacy without the 35-day month. This is the part most people get wrong or oversimplify. In the early 2000s, CA was accused of massive accounting fraud—specifically, keeping the books open for a few extra days at the end of a quarter to "pull in" sales and meet Wall Street's expectations.
Wang always denied involvement in the fraud that eventually sent his protégé, Sanjay Kumar, to prison. In his later years, he seemed deeply wounded by the "foreign" label that the media and competitors sometimes used against him. He was a Shanghai-born immigrant who truly believed he was living the American Dream. When the Washington Post alluded to his "ties to foreigners" during a hostile takeover attempt of CSC, it wasn't just a business hurdle; it was a personal insult to everything he had built.
What We Can Learn From the Charles B. Wang Approach
If you’re looking to apply the lessons from a Charles B. Wang interview to your own career or business, it boils down to three things:
- Radical Loyalty: Wang believed in "family first" management. While critics called it nepotism, he saw it as building an unshakeable core. If you trust your team, you can move faster.
- Customer Stickiness: He was a master of the "after-sale." He taught his sales teams that the relationship starts after the contract is signed. In software, that meant being indispensable to the client's infrastructure.
- Cultural Competence: Whether it was the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in Chinatown or his work in China with Smile Train, he understood that you can't just impose a Western solution on a different culture. You have to empower the locals.
Wang's life wasn't a neat, clean success story. It was messy, controversial, and loud. But he was one of the few billionaires who actually stayed "down-to-earth," according to those who worked for him. He'd ask for rides in Hummers, go off-roading, and chuckle over million-dollar deals.
To dive deeper into his legacy, you should look into the Charles B. Wang International Foundation's current grants or visit the Wang Center at Stony Brook University. It’s a physical manifestation of his desire to bridge the gap between the land of his birth and the land that gave him a home.
Your next move: If you're managing a team, try looking at "the heart" instead of the resume for your next hire. Ask yourself: does this person have the drive you can't teach? That's the Charles Wang way.