A few days ago, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei's letter to his alma mater was exposed. "It's winter, but spring will come soon." In the letter, Ren Zhengfei said that now that the company is in the midst of a "cold winter", Huawei hopes to "produce more grain" through HUAWEI CLOUD, digital energy, smart cars and other businesses to survive the winter.
Ren Zhengfei started from scratch at the age of 43, bringing Huawei to a company that the world respects. For more than 30 years, Huawei and Ren Zhengfei have experienced unimaginable tribulations. Today, the 77-year-old Ren Zhengfei is still Huawei's helmsman, leading Huawei to ride the wind and waves.
Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei
In the face of the cruel blockade, Huawei survived through self-help, allowing us to see Huawei's tenacity and tenacity. Moreover, the more difficult the situation, the more hungry Huawei is for talents. In the past three years, Huawei has recruited "talented teenagers" around the world. Huawei hopes that these talents, like "loaches", will drill into the company and activate the organization and team. Huawei's emphasis on talent and technological innovation also conveys confidence to the outside world.
Peace is fought
At important moments, there must be Ren Zhengfei's impassioned speech.
"Qingshan buried loyal bones everywhere, why should Ma Ge wrap the body back", in 2000, Huawei sent off the soldiers at the Wuzhou Hotel in Shenzhen, and Ren Zhengfei cheered for the heroes who went out, "It is a heroic son and daughter, who must stand up and rush to the place where the market is most needed." It was a tragic trip, giving people the feeling of "wind and water cold", with the Huawei people who witnessed that expedition, not even Ma Ge, Huawei employees are rushing to the unknown market. This expedition is to live, but it has opened up the prosperity behind Huawei.
In 2016, in order to fight more food and stimulate organizational vitality, Huawei's R&D army set out to enhance the company's front-line scientific and technological responsiveness, capture more business opportunities, and go out again. In the words of Ren Zhengfei at the time, "After completing this reform, Huawei will truly stand up in the world." ”
Consumer business, carrier business, enterprise business, Huawei three arrows at the same time, opened a high-growth model. But is this growth sustainable? Huawei has no bottom in mind. Although Huawei has a R&D army of 100,000, the R&D personnel stay in one position for too long and are far from the market, and the sensitivity to technological innovation is questionable. Huawei sent part of the R&D army to the front line, so that they could hear the rumble of "artillery fire".
Huawei did not expect that two years later, Huawei would be subjected to an unprecedented blockade. This can no longer be understood, they are going to kill Huawei.
In the face of successive blows, what about the 200,000 Huawei people? Survival is a problem, which is a pessimistic prediction of many people. But Huawei did not back down, but showed the courage to "live to death". In the absence of a way back, in addition to checking for leaks and filling in gaps, Huawei patches vulnerabilities, in terms of underlying technology, it is also a little bit of work, and the Hongmeng system and euler system have been born. In terms of chips, Huawei has not given up.
The road is out. Huawei formed a new team in the hope of gathering internal industry experts to tap the company's potential. With the greater resistance in overseas markets, especially in Europe and the United States, Huawei's nearly 200,000 employees need to break the border and reorganize to facilitate the rapid mobilization of resources and achieve the purpose of more grain.
Huawei's new legions include the Coal Mine Corps, the Customs and Port Corps, the Smart Highway Corps, the Data Center Energy Corps, and the Smart PV Corps. Some are aimed at traditional fields, but Huawei has given new value to traditional industries through digitalization. For example, the coal mining industry, in the past, has always relied on labor, but underground operations are very dangerous, and now young people are not willing to do this kind of tiring work, Huawei through digital empowerment of coal mines, to help coal mines transformation, safer, more efficient, but also save costs. As Ren Zhengfei imagined, in the future, coal miners can also "wear suits and ties."
Before these legions were formed, Huawei was also doing these businesses. In coal mines, steel, ports, oil fields and other fields, Huawei has been using digitalization to serve these companies in recent years. The advantages of forming a new corps are that the goals and directions are clearer, the organization is more flexible, and it is easy to intersperse operations.
Huawei held the inaugural meeting of the legion formation in Songshan Lake Park
On October 29 last year, Huawei held the inaugural meeting of the formation of the legion in the Songshan Lake Park, and Ren Zhengfei personally supervised and cheered up the five "legions". A number of Huawei executives delivered speeches, conveying the determination to win "no retreat is the road to victory" and "no broken Loulan vows not to return".
Ren Zhengfei's speech can always make people's blood boil, and also inspire Huawei people to brave difficulties and move forward bravely. He made a concluding speech at the inaugural meeting of Huawei's new team. "Peace is fought, and we must use the spirit of hard struggle and heroic sacrifice to create a peaceful environment for the next 30 years, so that no one will dare to bully us anymore." He shouted on the spot, "Wait for the day we drink celebratory wine together, and listen to the thunder in the silent place!" ”
Victory is forced out
Multiple rounds of blockades have had a great impact on Huawei's performance. On December 31, 2021, Guo Ping, Huawei's rotating chairman, mentioned in his New Year's speech that the company is expected to achieve sales revenue of about 634 billion yuan in 2021, down 28.9% year-on-year. The sharp decline in revenue was mainly related to the obstruction of consumer business. Under multiple rounds of sanctions, Huawei's consumer business has been greatly affected. However, from the fourth quarter of last year, Huawei's revenue reached 178.2 billion yuan, and the worst time has passed. In 2021, Huawei withstood a severe test, and the company's overall operation was in line with expectations.
The road to victory is forced out. When Huawei was first established, its doorstep was occupied by Western giants such as Ericsson, Nokia, Nortel Network, and Cisco, and Huawei could only go overseas to poor and turbulent countries to fetch food - those places were under fire and poor medical and health conditions, and Western telecom giants could not see it.
At the beginning of the century, when Huawei Wireless entered the European market, European operators did not know that there was such a company, nor did they know how to pronounce Huawei's name. At that time, Huawei people who rushed to the front line said that European and American telecom equipment giants, like mountains, overwhelmed Huawei, and the projects they had worked hard to win were suddenly replaced.
People who have experienced this have told me that it is understandable why the European telecom giants do not believe in Huawei. At that time, Europe and the United States had almost no understanding of China's technology field, nor had they seen Chinese companies going out, and Huawei suddenly appeared, which was too abrupt. In addition, in the field of communications, stability is the most important and needs to be repeatedly verified, and it is reasonable for them to choose Nokia, Ericsson, etc.
At the same time, Huawei also understands that only by leading technology can it win the recognition of European telecom equipment manufacturers. Since then, Huawei has begun to tackle technical problems, and finally won the recognition of customers with its technical capabilities that are far ahead. Through the efforts of Huawei people, Huawei Wireless became the boss of the European market ten years ago, defeating local century-old giants such as Ericsson and Nokia.
However, today the environment has changed again, and the leading position in technology (the company with the largest number of core 5G patents in the world) has also made Huawei buckled into various unfair hats, and Huawei has begun a journey of suffering. This time, Huawei's rejection is not Huawei's own problem, but a trumped-up crime.
The company with the largest number of core 5G patents in the world
The world is flat, the division of labor and cooperation in all walks of life is constantly refined, and each enterprise focuses on its own familiar field, which is the most ideal state. However, this order was broken, resulting in artificial fragmentation. Under this pressure, looking at the world, it is difficult for any technology company to resist. Huawei has prepared for the worst from the beginning, throwing away all illusions.
Invest in the future and recruit talents
In the most difficult times, Huawei is still recruiting high-end talents and welcomes scientists to join Huawei. Recently, Huawei has welcomed two "genius teenagers" to join, one is a 22-year-old girl Valeria Ryabchikova, and the other is 20-year-old Ilya Khlyustov, both of whom are from Russia.
Valeria, known as a mathematical genius, was born in 2000, began to participate in programming competitions in middle school, won the championship in the competition of the Russian International Programming Camp P in 2020, and in 2021, she won the 44th International Collegiate Programming Competition. Ilya Khlyustov, 22, specializes in algorithms and machine learning.
Russia is a country rich in mathematicians and scientists, and it is a Russian genius who helps Huawei open up network algorithms. To this end, Huawei has always advocated absorbing cosmic energy, opening R&D centers and research centers in every international metropolis where talents gather to achieve local access to global talents.
Since 2019, Huawei has issued a global recruitment order to recruit talented teenagers around the world to explore the unknown, especially committed to cutting-edge scientific and technological research. These geniuses are mainly outstanding talents in mathematics, artificial intelligence, computers, physics, materials, chips, chemistry and other fields. For these talented teenagers, Huawei can offer an annual salary of more than 2 million yuan.
Guo Ping, Huawei's rotating chairman, also said in his 2022 New Year's speech that Huawei will recruit talents from all over the world. Ren Zhengfei also said in a letter to his alma mater: "No matter how poor the company is, it must also invest in the future..."
Winter is coming, will spring be far away? I believe that Huawei, which attaches great importance to talent, will be able to take root deeper, and in the near future, we will see a more powerful Huawei.