Two young STEM talents, Liao Minghui and Wu Minyan, recently joined Huawei as part of the company’s young prodigy recruitment program, which founder Ren Zhengfei instituted following Huawei’s inclusion on the United States Department of Commerce’s Entity List in 2019, placing it under trade restrictions.
Graduates who are hired through the enrollment program receive sky-high annual salaries in the band of RMB 1–2 million (USD 156,000–309,000). The project is meant to draft technically exceptional individuals who have expertise in computer programming, physics, materials science, semiconductors, intelligent manufacturing, and chemistry. Eight employees joined Huawei through this “Genius Youth” program in 2019. Five more were added in 2020.
Liao Minghui received his PhD from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, with a research focus in computer vision. Wu Minyan received his bachelor’s degree from HUST in computer science, and has worked for Google, Ant Group, and Microsoft.
The hires come at a time when Huawei is in need of new energy, as its total revenue in 2020 grew by just 3.8% compared to 2019, while net profit only grew by 3.2%. Huawei is competing for chip engineering talent in Europe in what is a critical recruiting cycle for the company, according to Ren. Although the company is actively shrinking its smartphone business, it is developing other business lines with a foray into electric vehicles, while trying to embed its HarmonyOS operating system across more internet-of-things devices.
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KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content published by 36Kr. This article was originally written by Yuan Silai for 36Kr.