Hi;
It’s been 1 year since I started working at Huawei. During this time, I had the opportunity to accumulate many memories and meet very valuable people. When I started working, I had established a warning to myself that I would write such an article at the end of 1 year and I wanted to write down what I saw and lived with this notification recently.
First of all, I want to start with the procedure to start. Every engineer who starts working at Huawei is subjected to a 2-month training period, and the process begins. Whether you are a developer at Junior level or an expert at Senior level, this process, called the probation process, is your only expectation for the company for 2 months to concentrate on the orientation of your work. At this stage, an experienced teammate is appointed as your Tutor as a guide and you are informed about the information that you can ask with any questions. (I would like to thank my friend Özcan YARIMDÜNYA, helped to me 2 months, I have won a great friend, where I can patiently discuss even the worst ideas I can think of.)
Probation
Actually, the only purpose of this process is not to concentrate on your job and adapt to the project you will be involved in. In this process, Huawei organized a training called NEO (New Employees Orientation), and from all the sectors it has been active for 1 week, what you need to do in a possible terrorist attack that may happen to you in the office environment, how much of each penny of your salary comes to you and how much gives detailed training to its institutions and organizations.
Once you reach the end of the first month of this process, the company expects you to present what you have learned for 1 month. You are presenting with your Tutor and a manager (sometimes the number may increase depending on your team). By this way, it is aimed to identify the missing parts and obtain more solid foundations.
At the end of the second month, you are expected to make a final presentation. Since there are more than one nation working within the company, every document including your contract is shared in English and you are asked to present your second presentation in English. While you get general information about the working area of your department in the first month, you complete the miniaturization of the project that you will work in the position you are working in specifically in the second month or by taking small works directly from the project.
Meanwhile, working hours at Huawei start at 08:00 in the morning and end at 17:00 in the evening. While providing service to almost all parts of Istanbul, the price determined as road assistance is paid to you when you say “I have a personal vehicle and I want to come with it”.
Working Environment
Turkey office at the moment there are around 1,500 employees and offices in Istanbul. In the environment where approximately 500 of these numbers are engineers, it is possible to find someone who is knowledgeable in every field, from Python to Java, from GNU / Linux to Free BSD, to consult your project or what you wonder. If you need help in a very specific area, you can find someone who can answer your questions in one of the R&D offices located in 14 different parts of the world when you tell your team leader. If you still can’t find it, then no support is avoided for this man to be you 🙂
Oh, by the way 1.5 hours between lunch break at Huawei. It was deemed appropriate to add an additional half an hour to lunch break so that the employees can get it done in institutions such as government offices.
Sensitivity to Education
It is perhaps one of the most liked features of Huawei. The company pays utmost attention to your development. In this context, there are options such as providing an Udemy account that allows you to take the course you want instantly, there are 2000+ courses within the company, and if you are doing a master’s degree, you can go to the University once a week with a shift method. Apart from these, you can find yourself in a flood of knowledge if you are eager to learn, thanks to the on-site technical and social training. Sometimes it is upset that you missed training due to parallel sessions 🙂
Another opportunity for education is that the company has an agreement with major universities for master’s programs. In this way, if you plan to pursue a master’s degree, if you prefer these Universities, you can do your master’s degree with much more affordable prices.
Unlimited Technological Material
In fact, the word “unlimited” is a word that I often avoid using. However, this time I can talk more about the limits that your horizons can reach beyond peace of mind. If you are a type like me, “I wish we couldn’t get enough of Ram,” or “We don’t have a lot of space so we can store data”, a big surprise is waiting for you. Although Huawei is widely known as a telephone company due to its telecommunications industry, there is much more on the iceberg’s invisible face. It has many devices ranging from base stations to Rackspaces built for giant-scale cloud farms, and special architectures invented to process big data. Moreover, you can easily access these devices through the lab and tamper with them as you wish. Have you ever played a pac-man from a console with a 256GB ram machine? 😊
What about Events?
Compared to other companies that I have seen on this subject, Huawei may be a bit behind. Of course, when he says so, he does not make any happy hour, so do not be perceived as we are not partying at Christmas. I may complain that we are not doing happy hour every week, but 🙂 Apart from this, we can see the happy hour at certain intervals, our cakes, pastries, occasional breakfast meetings, especially at the beginning of the year. For example, we had a pleasant Rafting event last summer. After a dinner at the beginning of the year, we continued to party on the yacht. If you haven’t seen a yacht approaching the restaurant before, it’s a funny moment.
Reward System
There is a system called “sparkling” in which your achievements are rewarded within Huawei. What you do within your performance has certain levels of material rewards called sparkling by your managers. In addition, your success is supported with a system of “heroes of the week” on a weekly basis.
Managers
I didn’t want to go through it because it is one of the issues that developers suffer most. Undoubtedly, the management of a project is essential to determine the fate of that project. A manager that you disagree with can cause you to go to work with your feet. I can say that Huawei has a different understanding on this issue. Almost all of the managers on your own team are trained in Huawei, and after starting as a Junior developer, they started to work as managers. As such, this provides much more opportunity to establish brother-sister relationship rather than subordinate-parent relationship. The developers, who have gone through the same path, are trying to resolve you in the fastest way, rather than giving you bureaucratic pain. As Nasrettin Hodja says, “Bring me falling off the roof” like( a Turkish proverb ) 🙂
All of the managers I have seen so far have been able to “solve the problems in the fastest and constructive way,” instead of constantly supporting what you do, demoralizing actions like getting angry when you have a problem or humiliating you. they became people acting with the good feelings.
In the meantime, Enver GÜL, who did not constantly break my server requests from him and strangled me to the server, said, “Brother, I need a solid hardware, if we install our own systems?” I would also like to thank Caner KOÇER, who left the Devops side to my lap without hesitation. 😂
In-Company Alternatives
Another possibility within Huawei is the freedom to change departments. Let’s say you’re working on a project, but you’re not happy. All solutions are insufficient and you don’t feel well in that team. When you share this situation with your manager, you can move to another team or even to another department within your position and go to a solution.
Again, it is quite possible for you to go abroad due to the job you are working with. As an institution that has R&D offices in 14 different countries around the world, it is quite possible that you can go abroad to support a country, learn a new technology, and follow the progress of a project.
Safety first!
Everything that contains private data should be kept safe. I can say that I have my own experiences on this subject and I have observed from my friends around me that I have not yet encountered a company that applies security more tightly. Huawei pays maximum attention to this situation by subjecting its employees to exams and training within the scope of its security certificate every 6 months. While keeping the security in the foreground by isolating the systems you work with, it keeps this situation up-to-date with the continuously published papers.
Transparency About Functioning
Actually, this is not common in our country. Generally, the sense of transparency is a bit forgotten when it comes to developers. In Huawei, the situation is a little different. The department manager regularly organizes a meeting every 3 months and shares with his team how the department is doing in that quarter, which goals have been achieved, which goals have failed, the possible causes of these failures and what he plans to overcome them. He then shares plans for the next quarter and team layouts. Even though it is sometimes stormy, these meetings provide an important vision for you to see what your team is doing as a whole and see what you are heading towards. However, 6-month intervals, Turkey held a session of the executive office still making statements about the overall state of the country’s R & D office, asked every question from an anonymous platform answered. (While more than 50 questions were answered in the last session, even though I was bored, he answered all the questions with perseverance.)
Huawei in the COVID-19 Process
I wanted to write this title to explain Huawei’s attitude, especially when we have been in the past 2 months. While COVID-19 only appeared in Wuhan, Huawei started taking measures. Fixed hand disinfectants were placed on each floor in the office. Information emails were started to be shared daily regarding the condition of COVID-19 and the measures to be taken regarding the disease. A few weeks later, while it was not in our country yet, mask supply and fever measurement started at the entrances. While many other companies are still worried about what to do, Huawei started “working from home” style, first by dividing the teams into two, one team working the other day, the other team working from home and managing this transition process in the most convenient way, it is necessary to switch from the complete home to working style at the end of 2 weeks. managed to provide equipment and successfully protect its employees from this epidemic.
Feel free to ask whatever you are thinking about or wonder under this title 🙂
