An Attempt at an Objective Evaluation of Huawei
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Having worked at Huawei for three years before leaving for personal reasons, I gained some insight into its culture and would like to share my humble experience.
Leadership Characteristics
Many of Huawei’s leaders come from technical backgrounds, but I wouldn’t characterize them as purely technical individuals—they’re more like politicians. It’s hard to judge whether this is good or bad, but for those who are purely technical, working at Huawei might be somewhat frustrating.
Understanding human nature along with technical expertise is essential to become a leader, which might be reasonable, but one must be cautious to avoid becoming a victim, having their hard-earned achievements taken by others.
Working Style
Huawei’s overall working style is results-driven, aggressive, unrefined, indifferent to rules, and not particularly respectful of industry conventions.
It must be admitted that sometimes aggressiveness is indeed a powerful force. Therefore, if you decide to stay at Huawei, you must be aggressive.
I gradually came to realize this later—you must enter a state of selflessness, ignore superficial harmony with others, and fight for all available resources for the sake of your parents, spouse, children, staying in a first-tier city, and changing your own destiny.
Caution and humility are almost fatal sins. You must confidently promise what you can do. Even if you later fail to deliver, there’s plenty of room for maneuver. Boasting brings you many benefits and few drawbacks—the worst-case scenario is simply saying, “It’s really difficult.”
In fact, if you have the means, you can find various ways to package things. Set a big goal, work hard towards it, achieve a moderate result, and Huawei’s culture will still reward you. Whether it’s slightly above or below average involves Huawei’s gray-area culture—you must find someone to speak up for you.
Boasting might be seen as a manifestation of daring to fight within the corporate culture, which brings it close to reckless advancement, sacrificing those who do the actual work. It’s not about engineers “hanging the ball,” but rather engineers leaving their families, working hard for a few years, sacrificing some youth and health, and possibly ending up with little money, or having their achievements partially taken by others. As I mentioned earlier, there’s a strong sense of “politics” at Huawei—sacrificing the interests of some to benefit others, consolidating one’s own power and gains.
I feel that Huawei’s progress is driven by the souls crushed under its wheels—some benefit, while others don’t get what they deserve. If, like me, you’ve failed Huawei’s personality test multiple times, don’t just memorize answers to force your way in.
Expansion and Conquest
Huawei has entered many industries, often as a latecomer that rises to the top. There aren’t many industries that it has innovated and pioneered entirely on its own. Huawei selects highly profitable directions, imitates the leaders—some might say copies—but it always avoids legal risks. For example, in the early command-line interface era, it wasn’t legally considered copying unless the code was identical, which is why Huawei didn’t lose key lawsuits.
After entering an industry, Huawei begins to leverage its core competitiveness—the wolf culture. Even in industries where Huawei is already the leader and highly profitable, employee bonuses aren’t particularly high. Huawei distributes money based on market growth; if a new business loses less this year than last, employees can still receive decent bonuses.
As a latecomer, how does Huawei secure orders? It’s impossible to be technologically superior in all aspects from the start. Instead, Huawei wins over customers with excellent service attitudes and preferential policies. From this, I learned that many customers don’t care whether the technology is leading-edge; remember the essence of “good enough.” Huawei uses its regular employees as outsourced staff for customers—the salary cost for engineers in a single meeting can be tens of thousands, regardless of how many actually participate, at least the team is complete. Having over twenty engineers online solving customer problems is a point often criticized by employees but also where customers feel maximum security and satisfaction. Is money spent on the product or the experience? I’m no sales expert, so you can draw your own conclusions.
The high service costs achieved by overworking engineers are an area for future optimization. Once the product stabilizes, the frequent large meetings with dozens of people will decrease, costs will drop, and development and maintenance staff will be reduced. Few at Huawei can escape “hard struggle” and make money effortlessly; to earn well, you need to go to industries still in fierce competition.
Later, Huawei will gradually improve its product competitiveness according to priorities and slowly capture the market. Its various product pricing is actually quite scientific, though controversial—the pricing model might just be a simple elementary school math problem.