Huawei Technologies R&D Belgium nv in Leuven: crazy working conditions..
Pros
salary slightly better than average, high technical level or supposed so. Supposedly , improves your technical skills but you might need time to digest high complexity. Leuven is clean city much cleaner than brussel.
Cons
It used to be a nice place where to work formelly named M4S, since then most of the founders have quited 1 or 2 years after it becames Huawei Technologies R&D Belgium nv. Later, just like in IMEC the management is beeing maintained under flemish control. Basically, in this new satelite branch of huawei you are squeezed like a lemon just like with chineses in china absolutely no work-life balance whatsoever !! The management is anyway very very centralized, the local flemish managers do what they are told to do and they add an authentic tough and harsh flemish management style much appreciated by the chinese and that's why they are kept in their position. 1. There is no possibility to discuss the overwhelming workload (for instance 3 tape out at the same time) because anyway in changhai they work so hard and even on saturday. btw, your boss may call you on sunday to work if necessary, make sure to be reachable. 2. People are so stressed and tired that they could even become ill, this was true even for a chinese girl in shanghai ( she quit job) and an indian lady. Of course, this will be denyed and covered not to damage the huawei brand. 3a. Specfications can change at anytime, sometimes you have the feeling that they don't know exactly what they want. Even worse, the team competing with your group in shanghai knows the spec change before the team your belong to. 3b. if you're a project manager, you are not forgiven if you did not cope for the change in specs. The punishment can be as scornful as not invited to show for groupe picture to be sent to huawei central management. 4. Huawei claim that the company belongs to the employee, however, If you are not chinese, you cannot have shares in the company which is quite unfair. 5. if you have a made a technical mistake your name and picture might be shown somehere in shanghai, the chinese way to punish people. anyway your name is in a kind of blacklist. 6. If you are a designer or layouter probably if you want to stay in huawei leuven, you might be senior but that's it you stay in your field and you probably cannot be part of the management unless you're flemish. 7. awful cantine/ it rains almost every day in winter/renting a decent flat in leuven is costly. At the time of writing this, at least 6 people have a left Huawei Technologies R&D Belgium nv in less than a year.
