Pros
The company throws large amounts of money at you, and they pay it so long as you accept their work culture and implications.
Cons
If you are a non-chinese foreigner with any significant talent, STAY AWAY. There are more important things than money, as you will discover here. Shenzhen is a hodgepodge of a fishing town cum industrial pit with a veneer of tech sector. A small fishing town that got converted hastily to a large city without considering the environmental or societal impact. English is rarely spoken in most of the city. The only areas that provide a western level of life if you are not Chinese are near the coast in Shekhou, but the transportation infrastructure is so insanely poor (terrible traffic, tons of new drivers that are so unsophisticated and new to the concept that all they know how to do is gridlock, poorly designed subway lines) that getting to and from the Huawei campus cannot be done in under 90 minutes each way. You cannot buy a car as license plates are only given by the Chinese government via a lottery due to the massive demand for new cars by Chinese people. In other words, kiss time with your family goodbye during the weekdays, as Huawei does not have work from home arrangements or flex time. You are expected to clock in at 8:30 and clock out at 6:00pm and your manager will receive notification, and you will receive notices of your pay being docked when you are not on time. Living in the international areas, someone with a family gets to "enjoy" seeing the massive legalized prostitution industry for expat executives with second wives at work every night at bars, massage parlors and so on. International schools are in that vicinity. If you are not Ok with people spitting on the street around you all the time because their airways are clogged by smog, or tossing cigarette buts and trash on the ground at random, this is not for you. Shenzhen is very hot and humid (think Houston Tx), but way more polluted than Houston, so a 10 minute walk outside during the day will leave you covered in a thin layer of stinky grime and yearning for a shower, as wind does not really blow inland since the seafront is completely blocked by tall buildings. Huawei culture can feel highly hostile to foreigners. Zero work life balance that treats every foreigner no matter their level as a factory worker. You can negotiate exceptions, but when you are part of a team the pressure to comply is tremendous. Huawei is a Chinese company pretending to be global, and as with many things in China, puts on a thin facade to face the world (e.g. Messi and Scarlett Johansen on their ads). Massive amount of militaristic language and propaganda are constantly being pushed at employees to "motivate" them, making the environment feel extremely threatening, especially for non Chinese. For a full history of their discourse, read Huawei, Leadership, Culture, and Connectivity or search inside the google books version. In the business culture of the company bribery and corruption are seen as acceptable forms of business like many third world countries, which in large part explains Huawei's success in places like Saudi Arabia and Africa, and why they are all but banned from doing business in the US. Once you start, you find out that your professional title means nothing, and the company reserves the right to change it to whatever they need whenever it is convenient to them (you can be a VP at an event one day, and a PM the next), severely undermining your personal credibility and reputation long term. Forget having control over your vacation days, as holidays are organized and moved around by the Chinese government. Huawei "encourages" employees to work the last Saturday of each month in exchange for holiday time. This also means that if an official holiday takes place and no one goes to work, they will all have to make it up on the Saturday afterwards. Theoretically these are voluntary work days, but everyone treats them as any other work day and they will expect you to be there for it. If you came from a leading company with valuable IP, expect to be under constant pressure to divulge as much of it as possible and to be constantly fighting not to. The notion of an NDA or IP rights is nonexistent and not enforced by Chinese law in any way. If you ever want to come back to the west and work for a western employer, spending significant amount of time embedded in Huawei can likely become a liability, as over time this stuff tends to "stick". There is no concept of employee/employer trust relationship, which makes one wonder how on earth a customer could trust Huawei. Non Chinese cannot receive Huawei stock. That says it all.
