PDLP Chapter 16 The CTO's Card
Chapter 16 The CTO's Card
At 2:30 pm on Wednesday, Zuo Cheng arrived at the Lanwan Communication R&D Center ahead of schedule.
He waited for twenty minutes in the corridor on the seventeenth floor. At the end of the corridor was a separate office with no nameplate on the door, but a sign on the assistant's desk read "Zhou Henian's Office".
At 3 o'clock sharp, his assistant led him inside.
The office was simpler than I had imagined—there were no leather sofas or floor-to-ceiling bookshelves typical of executives. A large table was covered with technical documents and disassembled circuit boards, and a whiteboard against the wall was covered with dense formulas, half of which had been erased, while the other half still showed traces of derivation.
Zhou Henian stood in front of the whiteboard, holding a marker in his hand, with his back to the door.
"You're here? Sit down." He didn't turn around, but wrote a few more words on the whiteboard before turning around.
He appeared to be in his early fifties, with a slender build and graying hair that was meticulously styled. What caught Zuo Cheng's attention most were his eyes—not the shrewd sharpness often seen in business executives, but a calm focus imbued with a strong technical background.
This is a CTO who crawled out of a laboratory, not someone who walked out of an MBA classroom.
"I've carefully reviewed your research proposal." Zhou Henian sat down opposite Zuo Cheng, skipping pleasantries and getting straight to the point. "Ninety-one points is the combined score from all five judges. If you only look at my score—ninety-six."
He gave the highest score.
"Thank you for your approval, Mr. Zhou."
"It's not approval, it's curiosity." Zhou Henian stared at him, his gaze carrying the air of a researcher examining a sample. "The adaptive tracking mechanism in your proposal is theoretically very elegant, but what interests me most isn't the theory—it's your technology transfer documentation."
Zuo Cheng was slightly taken aback. He thought Zhou Henian would talk about algorithms themselves.
"There's a detail in the document that you probably didn't even notice yourself," Zhou Henian said, flipping through the printed copy on the table and pointing to a page. "When describing the fault recovery process for the anomaly detection module, you used a layered degradation design—when the core function fails, auxiliary functions are shut down first to save the system; when auxiliary functions fail, the core operation remains unaffected. This design pattern is almost never seen in academic papers, but it's standard practice in industrial-grade communication systems."
He raised his head, his gaze sharpening.
"A senior undergraduate student naturally wrote industrial-grade design thinking in a technology transfer document. I'm curious—where did you learn this?"
Zuo Cheng's heart skipped a beat.
This is a difficult question to answer.
The design of layered degradation wasn't knowledge he gained from the system, but rather an engineering intuition he accumulated from working in a company for over a decade in his previous life. This intuition couldn't be explained by "reading a lot of papers," because those papers didn't actually cover these things.
But he couldn't possibly tell Zhou Henian, "I worked in the telecommunications industry for ten years in my previous life."
"I did a two-month internship at a small telecommunications company during my junior year summer break," Zuo Cheng said, half-jokingly. In his previous life, he had indeed worked at a small company, but not as an intern; it was a full-time job, and not for two months, but for three years. "During my internship, I was exposed to some maintenance work on live network systems. The layered degradation system was taught to me by my supervising engineer."
Zhou Henian looked at him for a few seconds but did not ask any further questions.
Zuo Cheng wasn't sure if he believed him, but at least the answer made logical sense.
"Alright." Zhou Henian leaned back in his chair, his tone shifting from scrutiny to business. "Han Zhe probably already told you that I want to discuss more than just the research topic today."
"Yes."
"Blue Bay Communications has a strategic project next year, codenamed 'Sky Dome'," Zhou Henian said, lowering his voice slightly. "I can't reveal too much about the details right now, but the direction is highly related to the channel estimation algorithm you're working on—to be precise, your research results could directly become one of the technological foundations of the Sky Dome project."
Zuo Cheng paused for a moment.
Strategic project. Technological foundation.
"The technical team for Project Sky Dome is still in the process of being assembled, and I'm looking for people everywhere." Zhou Henian looked at him. "I'm not asking you to make a decision right now, but I want to give you a chance to learn more in advance—if you pass the second stage of your project smoothly, I will arrange for you to get involved in the preliminary work of Project Sky Dome when you come to Blue Bay Communications for your internship during the winter break."
The nature of this internship is—
"Paid internships, with salaries paid according to the standards for full-time R&D engineers," Zhou Henian stated a figure.
Zuo Cheng's expression didn't change, but he quickly did some mental calculations—this monthly salary was about three times his current total monthly income at Studio 402.
"Furthermore, if the Sky Dome project is launched, members of the core technology team can secure formal offers from Blue Bay Communications in advance, bypassing the campus recruitment process."
No campus recruitment process. We've secured an offer directly.
For a senior undergraduate student who hasn't graduated yet, the significance of this card is self-evident.
"Mr. Zhou, I'm very interested." Zuo Cheng didn't feign modesty, but he didn't immediately agree either. "However, I'd like to confirm one thing—does the Sky Dome project have any exclusivity requirements for team members? I currently have my own startup team and other ongoing research projects. If I participate in Sky Dome, it would require full-time commitment, which might conflict with my schedule."
Zhou Henian smiled; it was the first time he had smiled today.
"Your question is more mature than most graduate students'," he said. "There are no exclusivity requirements during the internship; you can continue with your startup team and research projects. However, if you're to formally join Sky Dome's core team later, a certain time commitment is indeed required. We can discuss the specific details when you come back for winter break."
"Okay. I'll finish step two first."
"Of course." Zhou Henian stood up, extended his hand, and said, "If you need technical support from the R&D center for step two, just contact Han Zhe directly. Don't hesitate to ask."
Zuo Cheng shook hands with him. Zhou Henian's hands were dry and strong, with thin calluses typical of someone who spends years typing on a keyboard.
When Zuo Cheng came out of the office, the sunlight in the corridor was bright. He stood at the elevator entrance for a while, not pressing the go button immediately.
Sky Dome Project.
Strategic level. Highly relevant to his algorithm. Technical foundation. Core team secured the offer in advance.
This is an incredibly powerful card, so powerful that if he takes it, his future path after graduation could be completely rewritten.
But Zuo Cheng wasn't the kind of person who would be easily swayed by a pie in the sky. In his previous life, he had seen too many "strategic projects" end up failing—funding shortages, direction changes, changes in top management—any one of these variables could turn a "strategic" project into "a piece of waste paper."
Zhou Henian appears to be a hands-on technologist, but Blue Bay Communications is a large company with tens of thousands of employees, and a CTO can only control a limited number of variables.
Therefore, he won't put all his eggs in one basket.
The project must be done well, and the opportunity in the sky must be seized, but Studio 402 and his own scientific research results—things that belong to him—cannot be lost.
The elevator arrived, and Zuo Cheng stepped inside and pressed the button for the first floor.
My phone vibrated. Zhang Lei had sent me a message.
"Brother Cheng, the results for the Rising Star Cup semi-finals are out! We're in Group B, third match. Here's the list of our opponents."
Zuo Cheng opened the attachment and glanced at the team list for Group B.
Twelve teams were vying for six spots in the finals. Most of the teams' projects didn't overlap with his own—some were working on smart hardware, some on biomedicine, and some on new energy. But one team caught his attention.
Team name: "Sharp Core Technology".
Project focus: AI-based intelligent communication optimization platform.
Team leader: Second-year PhD student, from the School of Microelectronics, BGI.
Communication optimization. And their tracks almost completely overlap.
Zuo Cheng clicked on the team's public information and paused for a moment when he saw the captain's name.
Ma Hao.
He put his phone back in his pocket, a faint smile curving his lips.
interesting.
Unable to compete within their research group, they moved to the competition arena.
Let's compare them then.