Google has a ton of PhDs, too, but the vast majority don't do R&D. I'm guessing the same is true at Huawei. Anecdata: My team of 12 or so at Google had (I thin

Google has a ton of PhDs, too, but the vast majority don't do R&D. I'm guessing the same is true at Huawei. Anecdata: My team of 12 or so at Google had (I think) 4 PhDs, and what we did was the usual "turn one proto into another" Google work that barely required a CS undergrad degree, to say nothing of a PhD. My wife has a PhD, works as a software engineer, and also does pretty routine data plumbing work.