A good company for mid-career technical people who look for a break-out role
Pros
- A growth company w/ a lot of room for seasoned technical people. Huawei America research lab is rapidly growing and gaining more and more influence inside the company. Huawei is going through a stage of becoming leaders in its technical fields but has some catch-up to do. The higher-ups have realized the importance of technical expertise (especially from US) and put a lot of efforts in attracting and supporting technical leaders. For technically strong people from other established but more over-crowded companies, Huawei can be a good choice for a break-out role. - The company's financial is very strong and the overall morale is high. Don't underestimate the importance of a company's financial. It feels really differently when working for a company that grows in revenue vs. one that shrinks. Trust me as I've worked for more than a decade at one of the major IT company w/ 10+ consecutive quarters of revenue loss before joining Huawei. The difference is very distinct. - The company has a very effective way of execution. This could be a double-edged sword as wrong decisions can be done quickly too :), but overall I found it very satisfying to work where the culture is to get things done. I am especially impressed by the work ethics of the colleagues in China and marvel at the execution style (where nothing is left out of the loop). In contrast, during my years at a major industry research lab, I see all these brilliant people brainstorming new ideas but takes forever to put an idea into a prototype or to production.
Cons
- Huawei fundamentally still operates/manages like a Chinese company where centralized decisions were made and sometimes abrupt changes of policies. That could be hard for people who are used to the American company culture. I would say if you are not flexible enough you may not survive the first year of Huawei. - Working experiences may vary a great deal across groups There is no uniform high standard of work satisfaction across different groups. It really depends. Some group may have high turn over, others may be thriving. It really depends on the leader of the group, how well he/she is able to align the group's work w/ company's business interests and can proactively weather the storm. So before joining Huawei, make sure to assess your leader and group well, there could be a high fluctuation of experiences. - Negative branding/PR issue Before I joined Huawei, I was scared by the negative PR of Huawei. So if you decide to join Huawei, there may not be the kind of Halo effect of joining some prestigious companies (but if you ever get stuck in a "prestigious" company, you know how worthless "prestige" can be unless you get out of the company). Now having worked at Huawei for over two years, overall I really like the company and couldn't care less about the negative PR. - How long would Huawei's boom last? Huawei is clearly going through a window of rapid growth w/ expansions into new domains such as smart devices, IoT, 5G, etc. The last couple of years have been very good (thanks to the booming smartphone business). But how long would that last (given the volatility of cellphone business and the outlook of China's economy)? Nobody can tell. I'd say join Huawei now before the boom goes away and make sure you grow on the job so that you have more career assets to move on when things go bad. - Lack of diversity I'd say 80% of technical people are Chinese-speaking. So it could be hard for non-Chinese speaking employee to fit in. But in general colleagues are very nice and go out of the way to help our non-Chinese speaking colleagues.
