Stop and Go

• An Attempt at an Objective Review of Huawei
• Huawei Field Notes: An Insider's Reading of Organisational DNA

An Attempt at an Objective Review of Huawei

After working at Huawei for three years, I left for personal reasons and gained a bit of insight into its culture. Here, I simply share some of my shallow reflections.

Leadership Traits

Many Huawei leaders come from a technical background, but I don’t consider them purely technical people—rather, they behave more like politicians. It’s hard to judge whether that’s good or bad, but if you’re a “pure” engineer, working at Huawei may leave you feeling slighted somewhat.

Understanding human nature and technology is needed to rise to leadership, which might seem reasonable, but you must be careful not to become a sacrificial pawn — someone whose hard-earned fruits of labor are simply plucked by others.

Operating Style

Huawei’s overall operating style is results-oriented, savage, undignified, indifferent to rules, and often unconcerned with industry conventions.

You have to admit that savagery can indeed be a powerful force. The moment you decide to stay at Huawei, you must also become savage.

I slowly came to realize that you must enter a kind of egoless state, ignoring superficial harmony with others. For your parents, spouse, and children; for staying in a first-tier city; for changing your own fate—you need to fight for every yuan you can possibly obtain.

Being cautious or humble is almost a death sentence; you must pound your chest and promise you can deliver. If you ultimately cannot, there’s still plenty of wiggle room. Talking big brings you many benefits and few downsides; the worst that happens is you utter, “It’s really hard.”

If you’re savvy, you can wrap things in all sorts of packaging. Set a huge goal, grind like crazy, then deliver a medium outcome. Huawei’s culture will still grant rewards, but whether it’s viewed as slightly above or slightly below average depends on Huawei’s gray culture, and you must find someone to speak up for you.

Under this corporate culture, talking big may even be seen as daring to fight, nudging the company closer to a Great Leap Forward, with the doers bearing the costs. It’s not that engineers are left to “hang,” but rather they’re kept away from their families, toiling for years, sacrificing youth and health, and possibly ending up with far less money than expected while others take partial credit for the results. As I said at the start, Huawei exudes a strong “political” flavor: sacrifice one group’s interests to bolster another, consolidating power and profit.

I felt that the wheels of the Huawei war machine advance over the souls of both those riding atop it and those crushed beneath. Some profit, others never receive what they deserve. If, like me, you’ve failed Huawei’s personality tests several times, don’t bother hunting down answers just to force your way in.

Storming the Battlefield

Huawei enters many industries—usually as a latecomer—few industries were truly innovated and pioneered by Huawei from scratch. It will select a hugely profitable direction, mimic (or some would say copy) the leader while carefully avoiding legal risk. For example, early command-line interfaces were not legally considered plagiarism—only identical code counts—so Huawei never lost the key lawsuits.

Once inside an industry, Huawei unleashes its core competitiveness: the “wolf culture.” Even in markets where Huawei is already the dominant player, employee bonuses aren’t that large. Huawei distributes money based on market incremental growth; if a new business loses less this year than last, employees still get decent bonuses.

How does a newcomer win orders when overtaking every technical dimension up front is impossible? Huawei secures clients through excellent service attitudes and preferential policies. From this I learned a lesson: many customers don’t care if your technology is leading-edge—remember the essence of “good enough.” Huawei assigns its full-time employees to clients as quasi-outsourced labor; a single two-hour meeting can cost tens of thousands in engineer salaries. Whether everyone present actually participates is another story, but at least the staff list looks complete. Twenty-plus engineers on a video call solving the client’s problems is the part employees rant about most, yet it fills clients with confidence and experience. Is the money you pay for the product, or for the experience? I’m no sales expert—you decide.

Burning out engineers to buy service quality is expensive but an area to optimize later. Once products stabilize, those 20-people meetings get trimmed, costs fall, and headcount shrinks. Inside Huawei, hardly anyone can “lie back” after “arduous struggle” and still make money. If you want to earn, you must head for the industries still locked in fierce competition.

Afterward Huawei will incrementally improve product competitiveness in priority order and gradually conquer the market. Its pricing across various products is actually rather scientific; despite the controversy, the pricing model may simply be elementary-school arithmetic.

Huawei Field Notes: An Insider's Reading of Organisational DNA

After three years at Huawei I left for personal reasons, leaving me with a distinct feel for its culture. I now attempt, with several concrete cases, to give an insider’s structured rundown of the company’s characteristics.

1. Management DNA: the fusion of technical genes and commercial acumen

Huawei’s leadership pipeline shows a unique hybrid profile:

1. Technical grounding: core managers nearly all have R&D backgrounds, their genes shape decision logic and technology road-maps.
2. Managerial evolution: as the organisation grew, leaders gradually transformed from technical specialists into strategists, creating an “engineer-style management philosophy”.
3. Dialectical tension: purely technical talents must leap from deep expertise to system-level oversight, so career transformation demands twin up-skills.

2. Execution culture: organisational efficiency under high pressure

Huawei’s outcome-oriented execution system is a double-edged sword.

2.1 Efficiency strengths

• Target penetration: OKR cascading ensures strategy lands.
• Agile response: fast-track decision lanes handle market shifts.
• Resource focus: mass troops on key battlefields.

2.2 Potential pitfalls

• Mental toughness required: sustained high-intensity mode.
• Innovation dilemma: short-term goals may squeeze long R&D.
• Talent fit gap: non-linear thinkers struggle.

3. Expansion logic: late-mover systemic practice

Huawei’s market expansion follows a reproducible methodology.

3.1 Phase-evolution model

1. Benchmark period: reverse-engineering to catch up.
2. Solution innovation: rebuild offerings around client scenarios.
3. Ecosystem phase: open platforms, value networks.

3.2 Strategic traits

• Pressure-point principle: pile resources at critical breakthroughs.
• Echelon rollout: multi-generation product matrix.
• Contrarian investment: boost basics during industry troughs.

4. Organisational evolution through a dialectical lens

Every management model mirrors its era and growth stage. Huawei’s architecture reflects survival wisdom in fierce competition and universal laws for scaling tech firms. Advantageous at a particular stage, it also needs constant evolution for new business climates.

4.1 Model fitness

• Advantage continuity: 5G and cloud still need heavy bets.
• Transition pains: from follower to first-mover calls for new mind-sets.
• Generational renewal: younger employees drive management innovation.

4.2 Takeaways for tech professionals

1. Stage-market fit: choose organisations aligned with your phase.
2. Skill reshaping: nurture systems thinking under pressure.
3. Value balance: align corporate goals with personal growth.

5. Competition strategy: building systemic late-mover advantage

5.1 Late-mover path

1. Benchmark phase
   • Reverse-engineer to baseline capability.
   • Build legal compliance shields (code independence audits).
2. Solution innovation phase
   • Reframe solutions for customer scenarios.
   • Differentiated feature matrix (rapid-response service).
3. Ecosystem phase
   • Open API standard setting.
   • Developer incentive programmes.

5.2 Value-delivery innovation

• Experience-first strategy
  • “Fit-for-use” technology rule: focus on core need fulfilment.
  • Service redundancy: over-staff engineers as insurance.
• Cost-transference model
  • Make market expansion the main incentive pool.
  • Dynamic resource allocation (elastic manpower between projects).

5.3 Management tips & practice advice