A heads-up about interviewing at a major Chinese cloud provider.
I recently went through a summer internship loop at the cloud arm of one of China’s largest tech companies. The earlier rounds with engineers and ICs were great — sharp people, respectful conversations.
The final round with a senior manager was a completely different experience. From the opening minutes, the tone was condescending and dismissive. There was a clear, repeated edge directed at candidates with overseas education backgrounds — the kind of remarks that aren’t really questions, just thinly veiled judgments. I’ve done a lot of interviews. This one stood out for how openly disrespectful it felt from start to finish.
I’m not going to generalize about the whole company — the ICs I met genuinely seemed great. But leadership keeps recruiting heavily in Silicon Valley and overseas, while candidates are walking out of rooms feeling talked down to by the very people who’d be managing them. Maybe this is part of why they keep falling behind in AI — when managers fundamentally don’t respect people, even the smartest engineers in the room can’t ship anything that matters. That’s worth knowing before you accept.
If you’re a student or early-career professional weighing offers: do your homework on team culture and the actual manager you’d report to, not just the brand. 🚩