Helplessly disorganized, many good people - Senior Engineer Futurewei Technologies Employee Review

I worked at Futurewei during the 2019 "entity list" fiasco ensuing from the US-China trade negotiations. We were barred from communicating with the parent company for our final 3 months, after which the company laid off nearly all employees in my branch. When Futurewei WAS in contact with the China HQ, the situation was actually more frustrating on a daily basis. Performance metrics were completely arbitrary, misrepresentation of technical results was encouraged by management, and bureaucracy was molasses-thick, such that most employees concluded they should save their sanity and simply skate by. Futurewei relied heavily on contract workers, many of whom had precarious visa status and were therefore manipulated by the company into working unreasonable hours. In my view, whatever per-capita payroll Futurewei saved by hiring contractors was entirely negated by the sheer number of contractors and the company's refusal to provide adequate training or team structure.