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The Shattered Ceiling

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Q&A with Charles Chariya

Charles Chariya is an analyst at Santa Clara-based Yahoo! and is finishing up his MBA degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. In this one-on-one interview he talks about school, his job and his future, as well as the future of technology.

Charles Chariya.

Background: Born in Chicago, grew up in Moline, Ill. His parents immigrated to the United States from Thailand. Chariya is three-quarters Chinese, one-quarter Thai.

Education: Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management, Master’s of Business Administration. Vanderbilt University, bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, math. Illinois Math and Science Academy, Aurora, Ill.

AsianWeek: Why did you decide to get your MBA?

Charles Chariya: Between undergrad and graduate school, I started a consulting business called Nashville Business Consultants, Inc. with about 12 buddies. We went around Nashville and pitched proposals, a lot of IT related projects to small- and medium-sized businesses. I really liked dealing with the business side of things. And that’s probably the main reason I decided to get my MBA.

AW: Is the company still in existence?

CC: This summer when I was doing an internship at Yahoo! I dissolved it because Yahoo! offered me a full time position and I didn’t feel I could devote the amount it would require to sustain the company.

AW: Was the company profitable?

CC: We made about $40,000 gross over a span of a year and a half. All the people that worked with me were full-time employees elsewhere. They were professionals in various fields, who provided their services for after-hour projects, like designing wireless LANs (local areanetworks) for apartment complexes and so forth. The main success I had with that company was meeting a lot of people in the Nashville area and it sparking me to get my MBA.

AW: Tell me about your work at Yahoo!

CC: This past summer I was an intern and I was hired full time a month ago. I was hired as an analyst for the data mining group. The data mining group goes through all the logs we collect from the Web servers and we try to determine trends about page views to provide a better picture for the property managers— called producers—so that they can improve the level of customer service to our users.

AW: Where do the logs come from and what kind of information is contained in the logs?

CC: A Web page, the page is composed of a lot of different things—text, graphics, ad banners. Every time a Web page is opened, be it AOL, Yahoo! or any other Web site, the server captures the information on the anonymous user—what they viewed and when they viewed it. For example, when the server serves the page, it records the time it gave this banner or news article to the user.

The final goal in all of this is to make money. How do we make money? Currently, over 70 percent of our revenue comes from advertising. So we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what would improve advertisers’ value to users. One way of looking at that is to see if a user clicks on an ad banner. In that case, the user is considered to be interested in that advertiser. Sometimes we try to figure out ways that will help the advertisers in what we call click-through rates, meaning we try to increase the number of users that are interested in an advertisement. We do that by making better ads, and serving them [on pages where users most interested in those products or services will most likely be]. For example, if you go to Yahoo! Sports, we will probably serve you a Nike or Adidas ad.

AW: Do you feel that because Yahoo! is an Asian American-founded company it has affected the business culture or policies in the company?

CC: The two founders of the company are Jerry Yang and Dave Filo—you’ve probably heard about them dropping out of their Ph.D. programs at Stanford. Jerry is Asian American. And one of our biggest venture capitalists is Soft Bank, which is based in Japan. It still has interest in a large portion of Yahoo! because they gave Jerry and Dave a bunch of money so that the company could grow.

But as for working for an Asian American founded company...I really don’t think it has made a difference. A few years ago Jerry and Dave brought in a CEO. Tim Koogle came on board just a few years after they started Yahoo! Most of the management team up top, other than Jerry, is Caucasian.

Jerry is a charismatic guy. He’s our spiritual leader. If he were Indian, African American, Hispanic, white—I’d say the exact same thing. I can’t put my finger on any specific traits of the company that could be linked directly to Jerry being Asian American.

AW: There’s a lot of talk in the Asian American community about the glass ceiling. Have you ever experienced that?

CC: I’ve been in Nashville for the last seven years. And speaking with a lot of my friends from school, many of whom are still working in Nashville, they talk about the ‘old boys network’ and how it’s holding a lot of companies back. What they mean is that a group of usually white, affluent managers, VPs, and presidents have secret handshakes…Well, I don’t know exactly what it is they do. But I think the way they do things in the South is very different. It’s like the golf games in the South. You learn to play golf so that you can conduct business.

But I never experienced the ‘glass ceiling’ personally. Before I went to graduate school, I worked as a consultant and the skills I brought to the table were unique so I didn’t experience that.

AW: What will be the major technological advance in the next five years?

CC: I think wireless is the next big innovation. CPUs (Central Processing Units) are getting smaller, faster and using up less energy. A good example is the new G4 PowerMac computer. It doesn’t even have a fan. It uses so little energy, so it doesn’t have to cool anything off.

In general, computers are going to become more mobile. And with wireless, you’re going to be able to communicate seamlessly throughout the world with a single wrist-size device or maybe a phone.

AW: How is that going to affect global business and society in general?

CC: In Japan when you have your cell phone and you’re walking past the Gap, the phone will know you’re walking past the Gap. What Gap can do is figure out all the clearance items in that store that need to be sold and beam a message to your phone and say, ‘The Gap is having a sale on these items.’ That’s true for Tokyo and the larger cities.

Both Europe and Asia—Japan at least—have really embraced wireless technology and it’s just a matter of time before the United States does.

AW: In light of wireless technology, is Yahoo! planning any projects?

CC: If you have a Sprint PCS phone or a phone of one of the major carriers that are digital, and you subscribe to a wireless Web, you can go to Yahoo! and get all your personalized information on your phone. For example, yesterday I wasn’t in front of the computer but I was able to track Yahoo! stock prices throughout day because I had my phone with me. You can get news, weather, sports, directions—all on your phone. Anything you do on your Web you can get on your phone nowadays.

The interface is a little clunky, but it’s going to get better. This is the first version of the wireless Web.

AW: Where do you see yourself in five years?

CC: Maybe after two years, I’d like to go to Japan and work for Yahoo! Japan. Or maybe Yahoo! Thailand or Yahoo! India.

AW: Do they have a Yahoo! Thailand?

CC: Not yet, but I’d love to go and start it.

AW: Why do you want to go to Asia?

CC: I have a lot of family still in Thailand. And for Japan, I did study three years of Japanese in high school, and I’ve always been interested in the society because it’s so reclusive in a way. I love the movies that come out of Japan and I like sumo wrestling. It’s so mesmerizing. And India, a lot of my friends at Yahoo! are Indian and they’re always trying to get me to go.

AW: What do your parents think of your success?

CC: My parents are still in Moline. My dad is an anesthesiologist and my mom is retired now but she was a nurse. About three years ago when I started my company, my dad took an interest. He’s really become a computerphile. He developed a software package that allows you to record patient records on his Palm V. He wrote a program for his Palm V that interfaces with his computer. He is in the process of getting several of his other friends to start using it, and possibly eventually start selling it. I take credit for buying him the computer that he used to do all that.