The news that Zhang Ji, a graduate with doctoral degree of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), was selected into the first-tier "Gifted Youngsters," a program that attracts talents with top-level emolument and challenges initiated by Chinese tech giant Huawei, set off a recent wave of interest on the Internet.

It happens that there is a similar case. Zhang's classmate Yao Ting, also a graduate with a doctoral degree from HUST, entered the program after an extremely rigorous selection, and was employed by Huawei with an annual salary of 1.56 million yuan (US $224,172) recently.

Yao has majored in computer science and technology and her research interests include new storage media (NVM, SMR), databases and key-value storage systems.

During her undergraduate study, Yao minored in English and participated in voluntary teaching activities. She also took an active part in various campus activities and national competitions, including the debate team, bilingual speech contests in Chinese and English, the national mathematical modeling contest for college students and the national Internet of things competition for college students.

Yao also kept seizing various opportunities to improve herself during her doctoral study, such as project work, paper writing, attending academic conferences and studying abroad.

After the interview with Huawei, Yao felt that her research work was in line with the company's development, and she started a cooperative project with Huawei in the laboratory she worked in. Through cooperation, she believes that she can better apply what she has learned into practice in Huawei, and she chose to join it as an employee.

"There is a misconception that women PhDs are old, boring and inaccessible. We are actually young and energetic," said Yao.

Speaking of the issue of gender discrimination in the workplace, Yao noted that she prefers to break through this prejudice by showing her ability and outstanding performance.

"In fact, I am not against pressure and competition. I am a person who needs pressure to make progress faster," she added.

(Source: China Youth Daily and Xiaoxiang Morning News/Translated and edited by Women of China)