Ask HN: Thoughts on Working for Huawei?
I have the opportunity to apply for a job at Huawei in Russia and I would like to hear your thoughts on Huawei as a company. Would you like to work for Huawei? Why or why not?
May be I am too paranoid. But, in all the recent places I have worked at, there is a separate entity in China to do business with Chinese users. All companies are too scared to share their IP/code/designs with their own Chinese sub-organisation.
I’d consider it too risky to get myself involved into such a mess. That’s just me.
But lets not forget the Genocide the CCP is forcing upon Uighurs, Nepal and other regions. CCP are faschists and we all should look that fact in the eye.
Are you ok to work for faschists is the real question.
Not sure future western employers will comfortable hiring you if you have a long career there.
If you want to work in the West, know that Huawei's reputation is toxic, and I wouldn't be surprised if future Western employers would be suspicious of you.
If I would have this opportunity right now I would deny it. 5 years ago I would have jumped in without thinking.
“ The CCP are the Nazis of our time, and currently have border disputes with all of their neighbors. There's an arms race in that region because they won't respect WTO rulings. Huawei's founder is "former" PLA, which is the CCP's military arm. Huawei has gutted Western telecom competitors by dumping equipment on the West, which reduces tech job opportunities. Any Huawei router is one firmware update away from giving the CCP access to your network.”
I think it's best to not mix work and politics unless you work in politics. That said, be realistic. I would hesitate to hire former huawei or foxconn people.
Answers like "no never" should really follow up by not buying anything made in China (could be slave labour), hardware made in China (could be compromised) etc.
There is of course the moral hazard that Huawei becomes embroided in a worse scandal than what we've seen so far and somehow that affects you, or at least you need to explain yourself when looking for the next job.
If you're senior engineer with ambitions of spending the rest of your career there as a senior executive, then that is an entirely different question.
Unless it is a very specific and rare role that just opened up?
They are going to make you do irrelevant algorithm problems no matter how much of an impression you made or connections you have.
In software engineering, literally just skip the extracurriculars unless you want to do them, they don't matter. There is no rat race of eligibility. Just solve the problems after you get the interview.
Good luck
I am certain if you are skilled you can find another job that will not accelerate the CCP mission.
Big business is CCP controlled in every meaningful aspect. If you dont comply you get 'educated' then publicly apologise or you 'retire'.
What does the question imply, however? Do you have reservations because they are from China?
Would you ask the same question wrt applying at AWS or Microsoft?
Cons: No heroism. They have coding down to factory like precision. 996 is a meme elsewhere but it strongly applies here. Seat warming seems to matter more than output. There are good people there, but well, such environments don't attract the competitive.
CCP involvement is probably similar to FAANG and the FBI/US military.
Also you can verify a lot of information on Glassdoor, instead of listening to strangers who have never worked there. Anecdotal information is anecdotal.
But it is common for tech companies to surrender classified data to government and law enforcement, willingly or not. And it is common for corporations to take large sums of money from organizations that cause suffering for many.
Personally, I find the USA and China to be different kinds of dystopias, and tech giants are the pillars that keep them together.
I can't really think of a better overview than that, though.
I'd say it's not unique, most similar to AWS. There's a lot of things moving constantly, so instead of updating text documentation, the "table of contents" is the certifications. They maintain their experts to ask questions on whether an API or service exists to do X. There's a lot of automated stuff to scale, like labs and tutorials, and their marketing is very similar too.