Why Huawei Must Rethink Its R&D Pyramid to Boost Software Efficiency

Recently, a Huawei employee known as “泥瓦客” published an internal article titled “Huawei Should Blow Up the R&D Pyramid” , sparking intense discussion on the company’s internal community and even drawing a response from CEO Ren Zhengfei, who emphasized that direct criticism is the antidote to complacent technical work.

Organization

The article points out that architecture design SEs are separated from developers, leading to architects who no longer code and lack practical experience. Junior developers are quickly promoted to managerial roles, leaving few technical experts to accumulate deep knowledge. Multiple management layers (PDT, PDU, various managers) create conflicting directives and high communication costs, especially detrimental for fast‑iteration software projects.

Process

The IPD process, while beneficial for hardware, is too rigid for rapid software iteration, and safety‑red‑line checks consume excessive resources, slowing releases. The author suggests integrating security awareness into daily development habits and adjusting enforcement based on team performance.

Environment

Developers are overloaded with meetings and legacy tools, leaving little time to explore modern technologies. The article highlights the gap between Huawei’s reliance on older languages like Java and the industry shift toward Go, Rust, and cloud‑native environments, urging continuous skill upgrades.

Tools

Compared with Silicon Valley practices (MacBooks, local Docker, seamless Git workflows), Huawei’s internal tooling is described as cumbersome and isolated, hindering code review, knowledge sharing, and efficient debugging. The lack of access to global resources such as StackOverflow further limits developers.

Overall, the piece argues that Huawei’s deep‑rooted management genes—distrust‑based oversight and overly complex hierarchy—prevent a flat, agile R&D organization. While a complete overhaul may be unrealistic, the author calls for pilot projects, better technical career paths, and reduced bureaucratic overhead to retain talent and improve software quality.