Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

As far as he knew, the Alexa Smart Speaker, which was all the rage in Europe and America, was actually a product of Orange Technology.

In his mind, it was hard to imagine that a smart voice assistant so technologically advanced could have come from his home country.

After all, even the voice interaction engine in Amazon’s latest Echo couldn’t match Alexa’s response speed or the precision of its answers.

Wu Shengyu reflected on his decision. ’Perhaps it was curiosity, or perhaps I was mesmerized.’ Even now, recalling his conversation with Chen Yansen made his heart race with excitement.

The patriotic passion that had lain dormant for years seemed to have been reawakened by him.

As the scenery outside the window blurred past, Wu Shengyu couldn’t help but get lost in his memories.

He was a Jinling native. In 1993, he graduated from Tsinghua University with a degree in Electronic Information, then went on to pursue advanced studies at the University of Toronto. Five years later, he joined Qualcomm. He started as a common chip design engineer and, after fourteen years of hard work, finally reached the position of Supervising Engineer.

An annual salary of 180,000 US Dollars!

In Europe and America, that was considered a middle-class income!

But he knew in his heart that Qualcomm didn’t particularly value its Chinese engineers. Supervising Engineer was pretty much the glass ceiling for them. Only a tiny fraction ever managed to break through and get promoted to Senior Supervising Engineer.

And above Senior Supervising Engineer, there were still three more ranks: Principal Engineer, Senior Principal Engineer, and Chief Scientist.

’I’m forty years old,’ he thought. ’What room is there left for advancement?’

But Chen Yansen was different. Right off the bat, he had offered him the title and compensation of a Principal Engineer: an annual package of 1.8 million Hua Yuan, plus a comprehensive benefits package with stock options and a dozen other perks.

’Better to devote myself to our country’s own chip industry than to keep slaving away for someone else!’

His dozen-plus years at Qualcomm hadn’t been for nothing. He’d moved from the baseband integration department to the IoT chip department, and then to the RF R&D department. On top of his official duties, he could also handle the work of an architectural designer.

With Wu Shengyu’s skills, he was more than qualified to be a Principal Engineer, but Qualcomm refused to give him the chance.