Xu Jiajun, the former vice president of Huawei, wrote a resignation letter to Ren Zhengfei that is truly stunning!

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Before we know it, half of the National Day holiday will have passed. Don’t many people feel like they haven’t done anything yet? Today, Certification Guy would like to share with you an article about the workplace that every quality professional will find useful. Xu Jiajun is the head of Huawei’s data centers; he is an extremely talented technician, a director at the senior level, and a vice president at Huawei, with an annual income of over ten million. From an ordinary company employee to a Huawei vice president with an annual salary of tens of millions, and then to leaving Huawei to join Baidu, Xu Jiajun’s ten years of professional experience are certainly valuable lessons for anyone who aspires to success. They also allow us to gain insight into how Huawei operates and into Xu’s career planning. There are no good jobs in the world; if you put in enough effort, good jobs will come to you. And the most important thing: cherish life. Brother Zhengfei: In the blink of an eye, ten years have passed since I started working here. These ten years at Huawei have seen the company grow from being unknown within its professional circle to becoming a well-known giant recognized by everyone; it has been a decade of rapid development, one that reflects the company’s years of hard work. I also threw myself in, learning while swimming through the tide, and have made it to this day. I’m leaving the company now to pursue a new career and take on brand-new challenges. What I’m about to do involves significant risks; it’s very likely to be a life-or-death situation. Whether I’ll still have a chance to live after facing those dangers is uncertain. Before starting a new career, I thought about making a detailed summary of the past decade. Working at a large company that is growing at such a rapid pace like Huawei can sometimes be a hellish experience. If I can summarize the experiences and lessons from these ten years and learn the key principles for working and behaving, I believe it will be of great benefit to me in the future. Over the years, some people have left the company to write articles or books, criticizing and commenting on it, offering their opinions on its senior leaders one by one. Personally, I don’t see any benefit beyond providing a bit of entertainment – the company continues to develop, and behind that development are the dreams, efforts, contributions, sacrifices, struggles, complaints, dissatisfaction, changes, departures, hopes, and disappointments of 60,000 people. Behind that development are also various opportunities, major decisions, crises, mistakes, and so on; how can outsiders really understand the underlying logic of all this? I don’t want to talk much about the company; I just want to reflect on my own work experience, think about what efforts I’ve made, what contributions I’ve offered, what has brought me the most joy, what has been most beneficial for me, and what I’ve learned. In general, my ten years at Huawei were spent in a state of confusion – back then I didn’t seem to have any grand ambitions or detailed plans; I simply focused on doing each task well. Through my own summarization and reflection, I hope to be more organized and clearer in the future. After some thought, I believe there are several points that represent the experiences and lessons gained over the years, and which are worth carrying forward in the future. First, “Start with small things, be willing to suffer losses, and work together with others.” These were the words that our teacher of electronic circuits gave us in the last class before graduating from graduate school. Although I have forgotten this teacher’s name, I still remember those words to this day. Through my work at Huawei, I have come to realize even more the profound depth of these few simple principles. Starting with small things does not mean being content to only do small tasks, nor does it involve making grand claims or setting overly ambitious goals. Learning to accept losses does not mean enduring them; it means not being overly concerned about temporary gains and losses, and having the courage to give up at critical moments. Second, \"The bigger your vision, the bigger your stage.\" Much of our success comes from having the courage to think and act. For example, when I first received a task list, I didn’t understand it at all, but I had the courage to try and find solutions, and I indeed succeeded. Similarly, when working on SPES, even though we had no resources, no expertise, or prior experience, and even though companies like Cisco were also working on it, we still had the courage to take on the task and push forward. By not blindly worshipping authority or fearing it, we were able to achieve success as well. Of course, this is not just blind recklessness; being bold also means actively paying attention to the broader outside world, and having an open and tolerant mind to embrace various new things. Third, the phrase “Study hard* and make progress every day” is the most appropriate description of the requirements for IT professionals. True success stories and experts are those who are least afraid to learn*; whenever they don’t understand something, they just pick up and learn it. Our IT department has a talented expert named Tan Bo. In fact, he wasn’t born an expert; he became one by learning from a novice. He once told me that when he first started working as a UNIX system administrator, he was surprised to see the # prompt, because he had spent many years developing under UNIX using the % prompt and had never had administrator privileges. Look at the level of the expert back then! When I was working on a backup project with him, I asked him to research methods for backing up and restoring data in ORACLE databases using point-in-time recovery. He interpreted this literally, thinking that database restoration meant moving backward just like a person walking backwards, which was quite amusing. Yet, he would spend an hour reading every morning before going to work, and over the years he has become a supreme expert in various fields such as systems, databases, and development, with no one able to challenge his skills. However, learning is by no means just about learning from books; in fact, it is more important to learn from practical work and from those around us. For example, the most important lesson I learned at Huawei was the need to know how to make use of adversity. Instead of constantly emphasizing the difficulties faced during winter, Huawei focused on using those times as opportunities to change the global competitive landscape, and it succeeded in doing so. Without those difficult times, Huawei might have remained far behind its industry rivals for many more years. When sued by Cisco, Huawei did not panic but responded proactively, using that situation to increase its popularity in a way that would not have been possible by spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Things like these – turning what could have been a catastrophic situation into favorable conditions for success – left a deep impression on me, and I really admire the company’s top management. IV. Be brave in taking action, willing to make mistakes, and good at reflecting. Many things are easy to understand but difficult to put into practice; what’s key is to take action, especially when it comes to various management theories, methods, and concepts. Empty talk and vague plans are of no use; it’s better to actually put things into action, and then keep reflecting on and improving them – that’s what’s truly convincing. Without repeated practice and reflection in real situations, it’s not easy to do well even things that are well-known to everyone. For example, as a manager, one needs to know how to listen. I believe 99.9% of Huawei’s managers understand this, but how well do they actually put it into practice? How many managers at Huawei manage to avoid interrupting others while they speak, refrain from rushing to draw conclusions or give definitions, and avoid rushing to offer solutions? How many managers can guide others to express themselves naturally, ask about their feelings, and ensure they understand what the other person is saying? Fifthly, it’s necessary to have methods and approaches, to think systematically about problems and to design solutions in a strategic manner. In the years prior, due to some success I achieved and my research in technology, I became overconfident. Later, the company hired a large number of consultants at great expense; at first, I wasn’t very interested in some of those consultants. In the following years, as the company grew larger and IT complexity increased, I gradually came to understand many things. Western companies have professional experts who approach everything with a specific methodology and set of procedures; even there are many established ways to hold meetings. I became interested in studying these procedures, developed my own set of them, and used them to train and discuss with the key members of my department. In a complex environment, many problems can no longer be studied and resolved by looking at them in isolation; systematic approaches and a strategic perspective are highly necessary. For the operation of an organization, this is particularly important in the design of systems and processes. Einstein said: \"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.\" VI. Think independently, don’t follow others blindly. As a company grows and has more employees, it becomes easier to muddle along. It is easy for people to end up going with the flow without delving deeply into the business, thus failing to see the problems and dangers. Experts have conducted research showing that during avalanches, victims usually appear in groups; there are very few individual victims. The reason is simple: individuals in areas prone to avalanches are quite careful and vigilant. But in a group, the larger it is, the more each individual tends to feel an illusory sense of safety and to make decisions based on what others do. Yet in reality, no matter how strong a group may be, an avalanche is unstoppable. Therefore, I believe that in large organizations, the ability to think independently is particularly important. VII. Complain less, talk less, be proactive, and do more practical work. I used to be a complainer who often fell into the habit of complaining. But years of work have changed me, as I’ve come to realize that complaining is completely useless. There will always be imperfections in the world, and there will always be problems. The only solution is to face them and deal with them. Do practical things to change the unsatisfactory situation we are in, and to change the unsatisfactory version of ourselves. In fact, there are many things worth complaining about that are the result of our own actions. For example, it is common in society for senior officials, after retiring, to complain that people’s hearts have changed and that the world has become heartless. If we examine this closely, the reason is likely to be their arrogance when they held power and considered others to be worthless. VIII. Be responsible for one’s career, one’s goals, and oneself. Successful people are usually self-disciplined, keep their promises, and remain focused. Large companies certainly have performance evaluations, systems of rewarding based on achievements, KPIs, leadership directives, and even a certain degree of corporate politics. But if we focus solely on achieving good evaluation scores, on meeting KPI targets, or on gaining power and financial benefits; if we are only responsible to those above us or to others, but not to ourselves or to our own goals, and if we lose our sense of mission, responsibility, enthusiasm, and curiosity in our work, then we will surely fail to reach our best potential. And a company that succeeds in creating an environment in which each individual can perform at their best will be invincible. IX. Cultivating humanistic qualities and aesthetic taste may seem unrelated to work, but in fact they are highly relevant. Achieving outstanding results depends on the pursuit of beauty; the greatest scientific discoveries often embody order, simplicity, and beauty. Lacking any aesthetic pursuit, one dares to do anything ugly, uses any means necessary, and settles for whatever will do – it’s far from elegant, and such an approach surely cannot last. 10. “It’s only when everyone says ‘hello’ that it truly feels good.” Pay attention to others, help them, treat people with sincerity, and be honest in your behavior. In today’s rapidly developing society, the media tends to exaggerate the increasingly cold and deceitful relationships between people. But in reality, society and communities may not be like that at all. At least before I joined Huawei, I had some concerns about the interpersonal relationships within a large company; yet in fact, everyone in this team seemed open and sincere toward one another, and the relationships were harmonious. So the key is for us to be able to treat others sincerely, and to put ourselves in their shoes when interacting with them. Of course, conflicts at work are inevitable; in fact, there is no need to avoid them, as many conflicts can even be highly beneficial for an organization. Just like couples often end up feeling closer after having a fight. As long as we adhere to two main principles: 1) Focus on the matter, not the person. 2) Be kind to others. It is certainly possible to channel moderate conflict in a direction that is beneficial both for oneself and for the organization. XI. An open and sharing attitude: Working in a high-tech company, if one adopts a conservative and closed-minded approach, growth will certainly be hindered. XII. Manage time well. Having worked at Huawei for ten years, that is 3,650 days, with around 3,000 workdays in total, it’s doubtful whether all this time was spent on the most important tasks. It’s uncertain just how much of that time was actually used for productive work. Time management is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned while working at Huawei. It might also be a problem inherent to the company as a whole: there is a lack of planning in work, with constant interruptions occurring – either from others interrupting colleagues or subordinates, or from endless meetings and discussions that take up most of the time. Additionally, one’s own interests can pull one away, spending a lot of time on trivial matters ； Or it involves spending a lot of time on trivial matters, delaying important and difficult tasks until they become unavoidable, forcing one to act in a hasty manner. Looking back now, if I had really been able to manage these ten years well, I think the achievements would have been much greater. - End -