HLnovel Chapter 228 Talent Siphon
Chapter 228 Talent Siphon
While the news of the ISO standard's approval was making headlines worldwide, another piece of news caused a stir in the international technology community.
Microsoft announced it will lay off 10,000 employees.
This wasn't optimization or adjustment; it was a structural layoff of 10,000 people. The quantum computing department was cut by a third, the mixed reality department was shut down entirely, and the research institute was split into three independent labs to survive independently. Microsoft's CEO wrote in an internal email: "Resources must be recentralized."
On the same day, Google announced cuts to all its lunar exploration programs. Waymo's next-generation laser radar was scrapped, Verily's cancer detection project was suspended, and the budget for its quantum AI lab was reduced by 40%. Google's founders issued a rare all-staff email: "We must become more disciplined."
Following this, IBM officially put its quantum computing division up for sale. In an interview, IBM's vice president of quantum computing made a frank statement: "Our technological path can't outpace a Chinese startup; continuing to invest is pointless."
International tech giants scaled back their operations within the same week. Global tech media headlines were remarkably consistent: Winter has arrived in Silicon Valley.
Zuo Cheng saw the news at the morning meeting. Han Lu pushed her tablet in front of him: "Several core members of Microsoft's quantum team are leaving, Google's AI lab is also loosening its responsibilities, and people in IBM's quantum division are already revising their resumes." She paused. "These people are all looking for new jobs."
After reading the news, Zuo Cheng put down his tablet: "It's right that they're looking for a new job. But it's not the right path."
Han Lu looked at him: "You mean..."
Zuo Cheng stood up and walked to the whiteboard: "These companies aren't laying off useless people, but rather the core technical personnel sacrificed during strategic downsizing. Microsoft's quantum team's chief scientist is among the top three globally, and Google's abandoned moon landing project housed some of the most visionary engineers in Silicon Valley. IBM's quantum hardware team has been working on it for fifteen years; few people in the world understand superconducting qubits better than them."
He wrote two large words on the whiteboard: We want to.
That afternoon, the 402 Human Resources Department issued a notice. It was bilingual in Chinese and English, with a very minimalist layout, lacking salary ranges and job descriptions, consisting of only one sentence.
We put the best technology on Earth in the hands of the best people. If you also feel that your current company is moving too slowly, come to us.
Forty-eight hours later, the 402 recruitment system received its first high-profile resume. The sender was Peter Hoffman, the former chief architect of IBM's quantum hardware, 41 years old, who had spent fourteen years working on quantum chips in Yorktown Heights. A paragraph was attached at the end of the resume.
I spent fourteen years reducing the error rate of superconducting qubits from one in a thousand to one in a million. When IBM decided to sell this product line, I had the third version of the design blueprint for a new generation of error-correcting chips on my desk. I don't know if you need someone who only understands quantum hardware and not business, but I need to know if that design blueprint can be turned into a real thing.
Zuo Cheng personally replied to the email. Two lines: "Your design is more valuable than all of IBM's valuation reports. Come to Hangzhou on Monday; we'll cover your airfare."
Hoffman arrived three days later. He stood silently for a full five minutes as he walked into the 402 Quantum Computing Center. Tianyan's qubit stability was nearly two orders of magnitude higher than IBM's latest chips. He turned to Zuo Cheng: "How did you do that?"
"Our error correction algorithm is not based on traditional quantum coding," Zuo Cheng said. "It was derived from the integration of communication protocols and AI."
Hoffman stared at Tianyan's control panel for a long time, then said, "Let me join."
Hoffman's appointment was like a bombshell in the quantum community. In the following two weeks, the former head of Microsoft's quantum error correction group submitted his resume, three core researchers at Google's quantum AI lab applied simultaneously, and two principal engineers from Intel's quantum division sent video interview requests. And it wasn't just in the quantum computing field. Former Google AI director Erin Castro tweeted: "If you've ever managed a 300-person AI lab and found that 70% of the computing power was wasted on reinventing the wheel, you'll know why I stared at that Hangzhou company's job posting for an hour." She received an email from Zuo Cheng the next day. The same two lines: "We don't want your wheels, we want your brains."
After joining the company, Eileen took over the AI basic research department in room 402. In her first week, she proposed a plan at an internal meeting: to reduce the parameter synchronization latency of federated learning to less than five milliseconds and replace terrestrial fiber optic cables with inter-satellite links from the Tianqiong network. Shen Yiming listened, calculated for ten minutes, then looked up: "Feasible."
The arrival of Mark Chen, a former core engineer at Neuralink, was even more dramatic. He had worked at Neuralink for five years on implantable electrodes, and just three months before leaving, he had completed the tape-out of the fourth-generation chip. He flew to Hangzhou with his complete set of design notes and spent an afternoon in the brain-computer interface lab at 402. When he came out, he said to Yu Ying, "I've been in this industry for ten years, and today is the first time I've seen someone go further than me. It doesn't feel good, but it feels so good."
Yu Ying smiled and said, "You'll get used to it."
Within a month, 402 received over 10,000 resumes. The R&D center temporarily converted an entire floor into an interview area, with interviews scheduled from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. The HR department was overwhelmed, so Han Lu transferred 30 technical staff from various business units to serve as part-time interviewers.
At the end of the month, Zuo Cheng reviewed a summary table. The 402 R&D team had expanded from 1,000 to over 5,000 people. Overseas R&D personnel accounted for 30%, coming from 23 countries. Each of the four areas—quantum computing, brain-computer interface, AI, and aerospace—had gained a Nobel Prize-level advisor. The number of technical advisors at the level of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering had reached 15.
Han Lu added a point at the end of her report: The headhunting firm said that among the top three job destinations for Silicon Valley's top tech talent this year, 402 ranked second. Google remained in first place, but the gap was narrowing every month.
"Who's number one isn't important," Zuo Cheng said. "What's important is that they wouldn't have even considered Huaxia Company before."
That evening, Zuo Cheng and Yu Ying were on the rooftop terrace. The autumn air in Hangzhou was a bit chilly, and the blue light of the quantum computing center on the river beat like a quiet heart in the night.
"Aren't you worried that there will be too many people and you won't be able to manage them all?" Yu Ying asked.
Zuo Cheng shook his head: "Five thousand people is not the end, it's the beginning." He hoped that the R&D scale of 402 would eventually reach fifty thousand people. It's not about having a lot of people, but about putting all the world's smartest brains in the same direction. When all the top brains are pushing in the same direction, inertia itself will become a barrier. No matter how fast the competitors catch up, they can't catch up with a self-accelerating flywheel.
Yu Ying looked at him, and he understood that Zuo Cheng wasn't thinking about any specific form of leadership. He was creating an ecosystem. An ecosystem that would make everyone who wanted to enter this field take a second look at 402's attitude.
"So how much money are you planning to invest next?" Yu Ying asked.
Zuo Cheng looked at the quantum computing center in the distance: "It's enough to make scientists all over the world feel that not coming to 402 is the biggest regret of their careers."