In the eyes of many employees, Huawei is another ivory tower.
Produced by cones
Author | Kong Yuexin
Edit | Lin Wenlong
Head image source | Visual China
"The first time I had close contact with Mr. Ren was in the elevator, and he dressed very plainly, like an ordinary uncle." Lin Peixing worked at Huawei for 19 years, including 7 years overseas, and before leaving his job, he was the director of Huawei's global operator cloud transformation market management department.
That experience of taking the elevator, Lin Peixing still remembers, when he just entered Huawei, one day, as usual, as usual, as soon as he entered the elevator, he happily greeted his colleagues around him, but everyone else made eyes at him, made a gesture and other actions, he followed the eye and found that Boss Ren was also in the elevator.
Since then, Lin Peixing and Ren Zhengfei have had a lot of contact, and the Ren Zhengfei in his eyes is not the same as the Ren Zhengfei recognized by the outside world.
A while ago, Ren Zhengfei was on the hot search again, the reason is that in the internal speech in 2022, Ren Zhengfei said: (Huawei wants) from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of profits and cash flow, to ensure that they will survive the next 3 years of crisis. Make survival the main program and pass on the cold to everyone.
In the eyes of the outside world, Ren Zhengfei is pessimistic and disappointed in the future, in fact, the sense of crisis is something he talks about every day and every year. "In my 19 years at Huawei, I heard this voice almost every day, and if I don't work hard, the company will go out of business tomorrow." Lin Peixing recalled that everyone was afraid that the company was yellow, so they fought hard, and the result was that Huawei was getting better and better.
Many Huawei employees, including Lin Peixing, believe that Huawei, like universities, is an ivory tower. "When I was in college, I had my parents to support me, and I just had to study hard; When I was at Huawei, there was a company to support, and I just had to work hard to do my job. ”
During his time at Huawei, Lin Peixing had a wonderful life. He has worked in R&D, marketing, and change positions. Experienced state riots in Africa, bullets flying in the ears; In Latin America, colleagues are often robbed; In Europe, cars are robbed, wallets are stolen; During the research and development period, he applied for 6 international & national patent honors; During his work in the market, the company-level strategic projects that fell under the swoop won the company-level individual gold medal award and the team gold medal award; Wait a minute.
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Will the outside world be more exciting? In 2017, Lin Peixing was 42 years old, his 19th year at Huawei, and in a sense achieved financial freedom, and the idea of such a thing is gradually becoming unstoppable. Many relatives and friends have advised him that if he stays at Huawei for a few more years, he can retire smoothly and live a "carefree" life with dividends.
But Lin Peixing carefully considered the significance of staying at Huawei and going out to start a business, for his personal and social significance, "I think the value I create after I go out may be greater than the value I create after I stay at Huawei." ”
It was one thing he had been trying to figure out for a long time—that money alone would not make sense. Even success is not the meaning itself. "I probably always had a reckless adventurous spirit in my bones."
Therefore, at the age of 42, Lin Peixing resolutely decided to leave Huawei, plunged into the judicial industry, returned to the human fireworks, and explored the value of his life. "China's small-scale dispute market is large, the number is large, the handling is difficult, and it is difficult to obtain high-quality legal services, so the judicial industry urgently needs scientific and technological empowerment to improve the efficiency of mediation and resolution of small-scale dispute cases, which must save time, effort and cost." Lin Peixing believes that this can help more people solve the problem.
This was his first time starting a business, about the same age as his former boss, Ren Zhengfei, when he started his business. "After leaving Huawei, it was wonderful and depressing." Lin Peixing has a bigger stage, but he also has to face all the problems, "The most difficult thing is that the platform has to be built from 0 to 1, and it is working hours at any time, which is busier and more worrying than when he was at Huawei; The most helpless thing is that partners are not easy to find, and I have to play a variety of roles, and I also have the shortcomings of engineering men. In terms of financing, most investment institutions are more willing to invest in hard technology and are very cautious about using technology; The most distressing thing is that the various business disposal entities involved in the judicial industry cannot fully understand the digital transformation and upgrading, and even sometimes they are questioned, and the time cost of communication is very high. ”
But Huawei's genes have been imprinted on him, "In Huawei, there is only one value, that is, customer first." Lin Peixing said that the needs of customers are always in the first place, and who can solve the problems of customers is Huawei's hero." This is a value that I will use for the rest of my life. ”
Wang Chenglu, the "father of Hongmeng", was the president of the core product line at that time, and once in a chat, Wang Chenglu once said to him: "A person who has done a meaningful thing in a lifetime is worth it in this life." At that time, Lin Peixing thought deeply and thought, if he can do two meaningful things, wouldn't it be even more remarkable?
Together with Dr. Wang Chenglu, we received large T customers in Latin America
If Lin Peixing has done a meaningful thing at Huawei, then after leaving Huawei, Lin Peixing is trying to do the second meaningful thing he recognizes in his heart.
Here's what he told —
Origins: The "Temptation" of High Wages
In 1998, I officially joined Huawei. The reason for going to Huawei is mainly because of the "stimulation" of classmates.
In 1997, after graduating from Tianjin University majoring in computer software, Beijing's uncle said to me: "Shenzhen Huawei has developed very well. "This is the first time I've heard of Huawei. But Huawei's recruitment requirements said graduate students, I am an undergraduate, felt that it did not meet the requirements, so I signed a contract with a state-owned enterprise in Hangzhou.
Soon after, my hometown high school classmates came to Hangzhou to play with me.
After meeting, I learned that he went to Huawei, and the classmate said: "Ren boss is really good." "This is also the first time I have heard of Ren Zhengfei. In the mouths of classmates, Huawei pursues that as long as employees do a good job, they will give corresponding high rewards.
Source: Visual China
My classmate graduated from undergraduate school like me, and I thought to myself: He can go, can I also try it?
After another inquiry, the classmate said that after his monthly salary was more than 4,000, I was "stimulated" again, because my salary was only 800 yuan, I graduated from a school, and I was not bad when I was in high school, how come I was so bad after graduating from college?
My classmate gave me a Huawei recruitment call. I contacted Huawei's HR, and after listening to my introduction, the other party gave me the phone number of Huawei's interviewer at the time and asked me to contact her.
After talking to the Huawei interviewer, I went through 5 rounds of interviews. I was particularly impressed by two of the interview scenes, one was when I was asked to write an SQL statement on the phone, and the other was a live interview to write a C code. The interviewers were very professional and immediately caught the small mistakes I made due to nervousness.
However, I still got the news that "you passed, you can go to Shenzhen to work", when I left the recruitment site, I still had some doubts about whether the monthly salary was really more than 4,000, so I went to confirm with the secretary in charge of recruitment, MM, and she replied: "Rest assured, there must be more than 4,000 (yuan), boldly go buy a ticket." ”
At that time, I had just been working in Hangzhou for more than a year, and I basically couldn't get any money left every month except for living expenses. I put on my backpack, took out the only more than 2,000 yuan, and bought a ticket to Shenzhen. It was also the first time in my life that I flew an airplane.
An "adventure"
The decision to go to Huawei is more like an "adventure" in my ordinary life.
The first is the incomprehension from the family. After receiving Huawei's offer, I heard me say that I was going to Shenzhen, and even my father, a senior engineer who had seen the world, was worried about going from state-owned enterprises to private enterprises to work unstable, and my mother's first reaction was "Shenzhen's living standards are so high, a bowl of noodles will cost 10 yuan, can you stand it?" ”
I can only reply, I can't care so much, go and talk again.
This was followed by resistance from the corporate side. At that time, state-owned enterprises were not very good at applying for resignation. The leaders do not want me to go, at the beginning they talked to me, and even planned to transfer me to the marketing department or the engineering department, the position I picked, and at the same time can increase my salary and incentives, I did not agree, a mind to go to Huawei, so that the leadership later ignored me, cold treatment of my resignation application.
As a last resort, I had to take a leave of absence with the company and ran to Shenzhen alone.
At that time, a colleague passed a week before me, and I also had a local reception in Shenzhen, so I worked on the living room of his rental house for half a month.
After entering Huawei, we all need to go to the Shenzhen Party School for training for a month, that month do not have to work, exercise and study every day, at the end of the month I still received half a month's salary, with more than 2,000 yuan. I think Huawei is really good.
However, the daily learning courses are arranged very full, learning product knowledge during the day and learning company culture and values at night. During the training, you have to get up at 5:30 am every morning and go to bed at 10:30 pm. Many colleagues came from research institutes and other institutions at that time, many people could not stand this rhythm, I remember very clearly, at that time we lived in a triple dormitory, and one roommate resigned because he could not stand it.
This is also the norm for Huawei, with more people coming and more people leaving. I started with a job number of 14507 (I changed my badge twice.) But Huawei's actual employees at the time were about seven or eight thousand.
I think it is also normal, after all, looking for a job also requires companies and individuals to be on the same frequency with each other in order to go together for a long time. Although the outside world calls Huawei "brainwashing" onboarding employees, I don't think so, I feel that I am learning knowledge on the job, and at work, I think the most important thing is to do things.
Huawei's corporate culture, "customer-centric and long-term hard work", has become the core concept that runs through my work and entrepreneurship.
After I officially joined the company, my first job was to do system testing, and looking back on this, I am still a little angry. At that time, I thought I was from a computer software class, and I went to Huawei to develop coding, and the result was that I was asked to do testing.
Although I felt uncomfortable, I finally gave in, in today's terms, that is, Huawei gave too much. I remember that at that time, the company also organized employees to debate "do a line, love a line" and "love a line, do a line". However, Huawei is also flexible in the job arrangement, although it is a test post, I can still do development and develop test code. During this period, I developed an automated test platform that successfully applied for 6 (international/national) patents, which can still be searched on the Internet. In addition to receiving the bonus given to me by Huawei, I think the honor is also very important.
With the development of Huawei's overseas markets, my work at Huawei has also entered a new stage.
Overseas expansion of territory
At that time, I was expanding into the high-end market in Mexico, which was the highlight of Huawei's overseas business and the reason for winning the company-level gold award.
Looking back on those passionate years, I still feel that Huawei's overseas market expansion is really very difficult, especially from 0 to 1.
At that time, Huawei's strength was still program-controlled switches, transmission networks and other products, and in the field of wireless networks, it was working hard to attack 2G and 3G base station equipment. However, we know that the fungibility of non-core network services that do not involve major data in the market is too high, and most of the time it is just a spare tire, so it is difficult to have the opportunity to have high-level dialogue with large operators, let alone other high-end business cooperation. Huawei has always had ambitions to break through the high-end market and enter the core network business of TOP operators in Latin America, which must be recognized by the top management of overseas operators.
But at that time, the international environment was there, and overseas countries did not recognize China's culture and national strength. At that time, Latin America basically only knew China's Taiwan for the distant East, and when it came to China, it was necessary to put a question mark.
Not to mention, the market competition pattern at that time, the core network supplier north of Panama was Ericsson; The core network supplier south of Panama is Nokia. For the Latin American market, how can an Asian company replace Ericsson or Nokia, so our core network equipment has not been accepted by the top management of Latin American Big T.
At the same time, the whole company knows that in the communication network, the core network is a device at the strategic level, which is difficult to enter, but once it is broken, it means that we can stabilize our market position. Many of our leaders have struggled in this market, Huawei's culture is result-oriented, customer-centric, hard work, "if you can't do it, then change people." ”
I think it is very fortunate to be able to participate in and lead the strategic project of the high-end market breakthrough of the core network of Mexico and even the entire Latin American Big T, maybe everything is arranged in the dark, you should appear at that moment, that place, and do something.
At that time, Huawei's first priority was how to impress customers and procure our core network. As the person in charge of solution sales, I have been thinking, why should multinational operators in Latin America choose us? What value can we bring to them? Is it throttling, or is it open source? In my hard thinking, I was inspired by Huawei's previous national C4 core network for China Mobile, and I thought that we could learn from China's experience in Latin America and help Latin American multinational operators build a multinational core network in the entire Latin American country.
Taxco, Mexico at night
Carlos Slim, Mexico's richest man, had two subnets at the time, one was American Mobile and the other was Telmex, the equivalent of China Mobile and China Telecom, which covered Mexico and most of the countries south of Mexico. In terms of throttling, with reference to domestic experience, in the market insight and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis of international and domestic traffic in various countries in Latin America, I think I can establish a transnational network in Pan-Latin America, concentrate the traffic of all national subnets together, win with "volume", and rely on this to negotiate lower inter-network settlement prices with other multinational big T.
Subsequently, in terms of open source, I made market insights and TVO (Total Value of Ownership) analysis of the annual tourist population in various countries in Latin America, and gave customers a "strong drug" to "induce". I said that Latin America is so beautiful, every year can attract a large number of European and American high-net-worth people to Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Argentina and other countries to play, these high-net-worth people will be the users of American Mobile, or choose other operators? In this case, once there is a pan-Latin American multinational core network to support you (American Mobile), then the value-added business share of the entire Latin American region will be higher, and the stickiness of high-net-worth customers will be stronger.
When I put these ideas into solution, I quickly impressed the Director of International Operations at Mobile America.
The project had 15 million US dollars, which was equivalent to 120 million yuan at the exchange rate at that time, which was not a small project.
For Huawei, money is not the most important thing, and breaking through the core network is the most critical strategic core. From this project onwards, Huawei's top management and American Mobile's top management can really talk. At the time, the CEO of Mobile America also said to us, "It's very good that all of your other projects have to be as good as this project." ”
To achieve high-level dialogue with each other, Huawei has taken a big step, and follow-up cooperation is relatively easy. We started this multinational project in 2008 and after a year of expansion by the project team, we finally won the bid in 2009. Unexpectedly, in the second half of 2009, the two operators of American Mobile and Telmex merged, and Telmex's multinational operation supplier chose Alcatelronxun, and the CEO of Alan personally flew to Mexico to fight for this project. After another year of hard work, we once again defeated Alang to become the equipment supplier of the multinational operating network after the merger of American Mobile and Telmex.
At that time, Huawei faced the common competition of Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatelonexun, ZTE and other companies. With the full support of various departments, the project team worked through the night to write more than 200 pages of technical recommendations for multinational operations for American Mobile. ATT's CTO team at Mobile America looked at it and said, "Bruce, you can publish the book." ”
In addition, when I think back to the scene where PK dropped Nokia, I still feel thrilled. At that time, Huawei's equipment and Nokia's equipment could not be interoperable, and the CTO of American Mobile, who presided over the meeting, came up and asked, "Whose reason is it?" "The meeting was instantly filled with the smell of gunpowder. At that time, Nokia engineers analyzed the level of the message out of the signal, and our team refined it to the "bytes" in the message and pointed out that this was Nokia's problem. Along with the big win, the trust placed in us by Mobile America CTO and his team has also increased.
After the success of this project, in 2009, I won the company-level gold medal individual award from Huawei, and the project team also won the gold medal team award. Because of the busy business, I couldn't go back to China, and in the end, my direct leader helped me receive this honor at the headquarters.
After my first overseas business trip in 2005, 3 months in Africa and 7 years in Latin America, I finally got on a return flight in 2012 and returned home.
After the project, photographed in Tolantongo, Mexico
Leaving Huawei, a new starting point
In fact, for Huawei, a veteran like me, even if he lives a peaceful and stable life in the next few years, he can wait until he retires to take dividends to achieve financial freedom.
But I don't want to, it is a terrible thing to wait for retirement in peace, if only for money, after I leave Huawei, I can also live well by saving and doing consulting. The meaning of life is to struggle, and I hope to live a more wonderful life.
In 2017, there happened to be one thing that caught me in the mood and made me feel that if I left Huawei to do it, I might create more value than staying at Huawei.
The judicial industry needs me more, or it needs the power of science and technology to enhance and catalyze, so as to promote the transformation and upgrading of the judicial industry. With that in mind, I started my entrepreneurial journey.
Although this is incomprehensible to many people, I graduated from a computer science major, a Huawei employee, and plunged into the judicial industry to learn from scratch; But for me at that time, it was precisely because it had a big enough "attraction" that I would take the initiative to leave Huawei, where I had worked for nearly 20 years, and come out to start a business.
First of all, engaging in this line of work still allows me to use what I have learned; Secondly, the judicial industry really needs technology to empower or catalyze so that more parties can obtain high-quality legal services, and small cases must be able to close cases; In the end, its market space is large enough and has a high enough social value to give me the motivation to do it.
Judging from the public data, the subject matter of only small financial disputes in the country is about 4 to 5 trillion yuan, the average amount of each subject is calculated by 20,000 yuan, there are about 200 million cases, waiting for legal services, and in 2021, the first-instance civil and commercial cases concluded by courts at all levels across the country are more than 15 million. How do you resolve so many cases outside the courts?
For example, in 2019, China signed the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Arising from Mediation (Singapore Convention) in Singapore, learning from foreign experience and combining national conditions to start the pilot and implementation of mediation marketization. In 2021, the "Opinions on Strengthening the Governance of Litigation Sources and Promoting the Diversified Resolution of Contradictions and Disputes" proposed: Promote more rule of law forces to the guiding end, strengthen the prevention of contradictions and disputes at the source, the front-end resolution, and the control of the gate, improve the preventive legal system, and reduce the increase in litigation from the source.
In my opinion, only by marketization, specialization, development of a platform, and establishment of an ecology can we mobilize the power of more than 700,000 mediation organizations and millions of mediators across the country, apply mature science and technology to the judicial industry, continuously improve the quality and efficiency of judicial dispute resolution, and let more disputes be resolved outside the courts, so that the business environment will be better, the society will be more stable, and in turn, it will promote the development of various industries faster. I thought it was too meaningful, so I resolutely left Huawei and came out to do such a business.
As Dr. Wang Chenglu said to me, "If a person does a meaningful thing in a lifetime, this life is worth it." "I think I've done a great job at Huawei, but if I do something meaningful based on Huawei's experience, I may contribute more value, but it will take time to verify."
My current company is mainly engaged in Internet + judicial/social governance, using the Internet, cloud computing, big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence and other mature advanced technology applications, is committed to the construction of legal technology service platforms and ecosystems in the fields of dispute mediation, litigation non-linkage, content security, etc., providing intelligent technical services and social services for urban social governance and cyberspace governance, and helping and accelerating the digital transformation and upgrading of the judicial industry.
But going back to the starting point, starting everything from scratch, is not an easy task.
When I was the deputy representative of Huawei's Venezuelan representative office, there were more than 1,000 people in the representative office, and although my current company team only has more than 50 people, my pressure has increased sharply, because the salaries of these people are paid by myself, and no company has "topped" in front of me.
The unexpected epidemic disrupted and slowed down the company's development rhythm, but no matter what, I will stick to it. Because this line of work is not only the trend of the times, but also the need of everyone. I don't think anyone wants to get involved in a conflict. Society needs harmony and stability, and on the one hand, stability comes from the contradiction and dispute arising from the rapid development of the economy that can obtain efficient and high-quality judicial protection services.
For me, leaving Huawei and starting a new career, the sense of disparity cannot be ignored. When I was at Huawei, I just had to do my job, because many problems Huawei's big platform has helped me solve. At Huawei, all people are customer-centric, as long as it is a solution to solve customer problems and needs, whether it is sales, delivery, single-product marketing, or other departments, they will actively cooperate.
"If you don't solve the customer's problem, you have a problem." This sentence is very applicable in Huawei.
But since Huawei came out, it has not been very applicable.
After starting a business, I found that it is not enough to have this idea and action by yourself, the key is to let the partners and teams united around you have this idea and action, and this really takes time to make a big wave, and it needs to be "bumped" and built step by step.
It has been more than 5 years since Huawei, the ivory tower, came out to start a business. During this period, I have experienced the twists and turns that all entrepreneurs should go through, and I can even say that everyone will step on the pit, I think I have stepped on. This is equivalent to graduating from college and Huawei graduating and being educated again by society. Fortunately, my partners, friends and family have always been so supportive of me that I will continue to do it.
But this also made me really feel the "fireworks on earth". When I was at Huawei, although the company made a lot of contributions to society with technology, my personal feelings were not so profound; But after returning to society and after I was "educated", I really knew the "sufferings of the people" and realized the significance of what I am doing now.
Technology is about creating value for society. For me now, the realization of social significance is more important than the technology itself, and I will try to practice it.