And your strengths?
I enjoy working with people. I enjoy seeing people succeed at doing things. And, when somebody says to me or my team that nobody can do that, then I immediately reply, “Oh yeah? Watch us.” Then we go at it. I think we enjoy that challenge of it. So, I think one of my strengths would be to look at an idea, put a team together, and then keep them working with a common vision. And make it exciting and fun and overpay them.
We have the greatest guys in the world. And we have the most fun. I have worked with so many CEOs, and I know that we have the greatest fun. There was a time when we negotiated a huge acquisition and there were two conference rooms set up. While our team was screaming and laughing, you could hear a pin drop in the other
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conference room. They all thought something was wrong with us, but we were just having a good time.
You’ve stated several times that your word is the most important thing—
It is.
Why do you feel so strongly about this, and how did this come about?
When I was younger, probably just getting to be a teenager, my father sat me in front of a mirror. He was just standing there with me, and he said, “Look at yourself.” He didn’t bark this out, but said it in a very mild manner. After all, he was a professor.
So, he said, “Look at yourself. What do you see?”
Being smart, I replied, “Well, I see you in there.” Ha ha. ( All laugh. )
“No. No,” he said, “What do you see?”
So, I said, “I see a reflection. Not a refraction, a reflection.” Ha ha ha. ( All laugh again. )
And then he got very serious—I still remember the conversation.
He said, “Look. Just look . . . When you look at yourself, the only person there is your word. Your word is you. No matter what happens, your word—that’s who you have to live with. That’s the most important thing.”
And that stopped me. It really made me think.
I don’t need people to split hairs by saying things like, “What I meant to say was ...” Well, if you meant to say it, say it. If you meant to say it, then why didn’t you say it?
I hate it when people start out with a preamble of conditions, “In all probability, in most cases, if everything goes well tomorrow, if the sun rises, if Mickey Mouse doesn’t die, then this will happen.” Come on. Just tell me it won’t happen.
Don’t give yourself all these nice outs. It’s okay even if it does happen. But, I don’t need all this bullshit, because I don’t know what weight to put on it. I don’t know how unsure you are when you say things like that. So, I tell people that if you give your word then keep your word. And I want it said directly. That’s all.
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What was the biggest test of your integrity in CA’s history? Somebody who is struggling so hard to meet payroll or just get the company off the ground is at some point tested.
I don’t think it’s ever tested. You don’t think of that. I think if you do think about that, then there is something wrong. When you give your word, you give your word, and that’s all there is to it. That’s it.
Even if somebody said, “But you didn’t get it in writing,” it doesn’t matter.
For example, I was going to buy Foxpro [a database program now marketed by Microsoft] once. The guy came in here, shook hands on the deal and everything. He went back, called me up, and told me his lawyer said that since we didn’t sign anything, we don’t have an agreement.
So I said to him, “You’re right, David. You’re right. We don’t have an agreement. But, you should really check with your lawyer. There is a thing called an oral contract. But, I just want you to know we don’t have a deal. You’re absolutely right.”
If it’s not signed, then we don’t have a deal? Is it signed in the right place? Is that his real signature? Come on.
So you said that out of contempt.
I didn’t want to work with him. When you lay down with dogs you get fleas.
Let’s talk about acquisitions. CA has a reputation of being somewhat brutal in terms of its acquisitions in the sense that people are axed pretty mercilessly. Do you have anything to say about that?
Well I have a lot to say about that.
First, you have to understand that the whole strategy of CA is about internal development, acquisition, and integration. Press people get more glamour out of the acquisition piece because it has human interest. Nobody cares about integration.
With acquisitions, you have human issues, so everybody seems to focus solely on this piece. But it is really a three-piece strategy.
Without one of the three, we’re dead. We can’t do it.
From a PR point of view, there are obviously better ways to do acquisitions. My PR people beat the shit out of me about how I do
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acquisitions wrong. But to me, CA has developed the bible on how to do acquisitions.
Realize that of 60-some companies that we have acquired, about 50 came to us because they were on the verge of bankruptcy—they were going under. They had to do drastic things. My own personal belief is that when I acquire a company, I owe it to every employee to tell them where they stand within one or two days, and one week at the latest. Do you have a career here—yes or no?
If you do have a career, then you’re like any other CA employee.
That’s it. If you don’t have a career here, then severance plans have to be worked out. And if you’re a transition play [an employee whose status CA is undecided on], then you get a 25 percent bonus for the period that you stay, and during that time we try to look for a position for you within CA. I tell everybody that.
Do I need two marketing departments? Probably not. Do I need two accounting departments? Absolutely not. Do I need two legal departments? Absolutely not. We keep the core technical people.
Sales people—whoever wants them gets them, we don’t care. Throw them a little something and they run. But we keep most of the technical, support, and development people.
The time during an acquisition is of course the worst time to tell the acquired company’s employees where they stand because of the instability—they’re going to be acquired and they know that. They’re in trouble. When you go in there all you really want to do as the acquirer is to be loved. This is the time when you want to come across as the white knight. Da-dum-da-dum-dum-dum… ( They laughed), and what do you do?
You tell them the truth. So you get all the bad press. We get killed because all the people who get cut pick up the phone and call the press. They don’t realize what they are doing to their fellow guys who are staying.
So, my PR guy says, “Why don’t you do what any other company does and keep everybody?” Well, if I needed everybody, I would tell them and they would stay. I don’t have a problem with that. We’ve acquired companies in Europe where we don’t have an office and everybody stayed. They ask, “Well, why don’t we do what Legent did?
When Legent first merged with another company, they had two headquarters. So, we’ll have two headquarters.”
Horseshit. You don’t have two headquarters. Then Legent acquired another company, and then they had three headquarters. Three HR departments. Three legal departments. So, why did you acquire
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them in the first place? What, are you the K-Mart of software? ( They laughed again. )
I don’t think it’s right for us to invest in an employee when we know there’s no future for him at CA. And I don’t think it’s right for them to be investing in a career with no future. So I tell them right away. Yeah, we could stretch it out and do six months or nine, but then think of what happens. The whole fabric and culture of CA would be torn. All the employees would be waiting for that second cutoff.
And once you start that spiral—just look at IBM. Everybody was spending their time looking at what the new severance pla
n was. “Do I have this in my 401(k)? Am I vested?” So we took the hard line that everybody would immediately know where they stand, and we get killed in the press for it. But, if you are going to acquire something, there must be a reason why you’re doing it. And if it’s really synergistic when everybody stays, then I have no problem with that.
Many acquisitions have failed and oftentimes people chalk it up to cultural differences. And it seems like you’re taking care of that right from the start and just eliminating the culture difference.
Yep. There are no culture differences. There’s only one culture: CA’s.
Period.
And people there ask us how we’re going to blend the two cultures. I’m not blending any cultures. I’m acquiring you, I think. Look at your paycheck next month. I’ll bet it says CA at the top left corner.
It’s very hard being acquired. So, during a big meeting of the acquired company, I always tell its employees, “I want you to go home and I want you to quit. In your mind, I want you to mentally quit. Then calm down, and start a new job with CA,” because if you don’t say that, then you’ll waste all your time with complaints like,
“Our company’s benefit plan had this, and CA’s doesn’t.”
So let’s say Joe Employee works at UCELE. How do you determine what to do with Joe Employee? Do you look at his résumé? Do you look at where he is in the team? What are the steps?
Okay, here’s how we do it. We basically work with their present managers, and have them rank their people—
Upper level managers?
Yeah. Upper level—anybody who has ten or more people that report to them. So, we ranked his group—
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According to ability?
No. Not according to ability—according to a simple criterion. We ask the manager, “If you were starting your group today, who would be the first person you hire? If I asked you to downsize your group today, who would be the first guy you let go?”
And if you have ten departments like this and they all have ten people, you now have a much better overall picture of the company.
Then, I take the organizational charts from two or three years and lay them on the table. And, when we look at them and then you see who is being laterally positioned—parked—you know, you’ll see positions called assistant specialist, assistant to this, special assistant to this, special consultant, etc. When you see that, chances are that you know this guy does something wrong—you’d better look closely at him.
And I then have my people interview everybody.
Everybody?
Everybody. This is what we call a “headcheck.” Because they’re going to be as good as they really are at that interview. We take fifteen to twenty minutes and just sit down and talk. And you get a gut feel for the guy. If something is wrong—we’ll have a much better chance of knowing.
Who does the interviews?
We have senior managers here in CA that have a lot of experience and have done this before.
How do you do all of this within one or two days?
We just whoosh it through—we’ve done it before. We just set up the office, set up the interview and the whole system is computerized—
all the rankings, everything. Then we build what CA needs. We have a pretty good feel. And, most companies that we acquire are really bloated.
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One of the things you complain about in Techno Vision [a book about technology that Wang has written] is about account control—that is, large companies such as IBM force their customers to become dependent on them. Is CA guilty of that with its customers in any way?
Absolutely. We have to be and we should be and we hope to do that successfully. The only difference is that our account control is not biased toward a specific platform—except CA’s. If you want, you can use HP, IBM, Solaris, or Windows—it doesn’t matter.
There’s no question about our goal for account control. But, ultimately all of this account control depends upon whether you can deliver or not. We deliver. Unicenter is there. The others ain’t. There comes a point where you have to deliver what you say. That’s the difference.
Every one of these companies is fighting for account control and we are too. Microsoft is too. Bill [Gates] thinks that everybody in the world is going to go to Windows. I think that they might, but probably not in our lifetime. He thinks that it’ll be in his lifetime. I just wish he was older than me. ( They laughed. ) You were once asked by a television reporter about making it. And you spoke about an incident in a restaurant. Tell us about that.
Well, the reporter asked me at what point I realized that I made it.
And the first thing that popped into my mind was a moment in a restaurant. When you’re younger and struggling, you have to watch what you spend—I still remember deciding when I was younger, whether I should have soup or have the appetizer. I couldn’t afford both.
And I remember that there was a point when I was in a restaurant and I said to myself, “Shoot. I don’t need to decide anymore whether to have soup or to have an appetizer. I don’t care.” And that was the moment. So, if that’s a criteria for making it, then fine.
Is that one of your criteria for making it?
Well, what do you mean by “making it”?
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What do you mean by making it?
Well, I think you never make it in a sense. You should always have a certain amount of insecurity in what you do. At this point, I’m having the greatest time of my life. My criteria of making it is to do what I want, to play with my dearest friends.
We’re on a team that is just unbeatable. We have the greatest time, we laugh, we sing, we do everything together. I have the greatest people around me. The same fun is here now as it was in the beginning—so I made it. I’m still making it in that sense.
Someone as driven as you to succeed has to put a lot into your professional life. Has that ever come into conflict with balancing your personal life?
No. My personal life basically is very important. There are two sides of your life: your personal and your business. I tell all my people that when sometimes there is a crisis in your personal life, you have to just let go of the business for a while and take care of those things. It may mean your kid’s sick, so you have to stay home. It doesn’t matter.
There are times when you’re going to have to stay really late because we have to get a project done. So, you have to balance the two. I cannot tell my people, especially my creative development group, to just turn their brains off.
But, I love my family. I spend a lot of time with them whenever I can. I travel and take them with me so that I have that time. I raised my first kid by myself. Not many men have had the opportunity to raise their own little girl. So, I know what it means to balance.
There are a lot of companies, especially in Silicon Valley, whose employees are just working all the time. Do you have any advice for managers of such companies?
I only can tell them what works for me may not be the right thing for you. But, I do go downstairs to our development area. And let’s say it’s 8:00 P.M., and I happen to be here late. I will abruptly walk up to a terminal where somebody is working, hit the off button, and say,
“Good night!”
And then I’ll walk up to the next terminal, hit the off button, and say “Good night! Hope you saved it!” ( laughter) And I will go right down the row and just send them home. There are times when I know how hard people have worked on a project and I know they are
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just killing themselves. So, the following week, I’ll tell them, “I don’t want to see your face on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.” I don’t want to see you in this office.
So balance is key, and I teach my managers this all the time. I’ll give you a little free advice, guys: when you have kids, you get what you pay for. Spend tim
e with them—they grow up so fast.
I was the speaker at someone’s retirement party, and I asked him why he was leaving. He said, “My son came to me last year and wanted to borrow the keys to the car. I didn’t even know he drove.
Then it hit me.” So let me give you some advice. Spend time with your kids.
Ultimately, you see, it’s not about the money we make, it’s about the journey we take. You really want to make sure the journey is fulfilling. Money is one of the pieces that measures how well you did and gives you more options, but you better enjoy this journey. Don’t sell yourself out just for the money piece.
I tell my people this all the time. If you want to go to another company because they are offering you more money, then go, but you’re not going to be happy. But, if they are offering you better opportunities, then I have failed somehow, and let’s figure it out, and if we can’t, well then good luck to you and all the best.
And, ultimately you’d better be happy and have fun doing what you’re doing. Otherwise, the journey sucks.
You are going to edit this, right? ( Everyone laughed. ) Part of that fun comes from the “extras” that CA does for its employees such as having a day care center for children, or giving free breakfast to employees. How soon in a company’s life should it start implementing such “extras”?
We did when we started. We didn’t have day care, but we gave them breakfast. I used to play ball with all the guys. That’s how we started.
It wasn’t to get the people. We just happened to enjoy each others’
company.
The day care was just something that I really wanted to do ten to twelve years before we moved to this building. But my lawyers in the company kept warning me about liability issues. So when we finally set up this place, I told the architect to set up the day care.
And, my lawyer immediately told me that I couldn’t have it. So I told him that he just didn’t understand. We’re having the day care, and it’s your job to protect me. I’m not asking you for permission. I’m
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just going to do it. There is nothing illegal about it and I’m going to do it.
If I can set up an atmosphere where I can take away yet another worry from employees who are parents, then they are going to be better. That’s all.
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