Tencent's AI chief wants his team to work hard enough to make DeepSeek work overtime

A manager people call 'Brother Yao'

As China.com reported, Tencent's Yao Shunyu is part of a new generation of internet managers who shrink the distance that authority usually creates. Soon after he joined Tencent, colleagues began calling him "Yao ge", an informal, friendly nickname.

Within his first year, the Hunyuan team, which builds Tencent's AI models, grew to nearly two thousand people.

Basketball, lunches and a week off

The article describes a hands-on routine. He holds an all-hands meeting roughly once a month, sometimes runs lunches or small chats, and now and then organizes a basketball session in the team-wide group chat.

After the Hy 4 Preview release, he gave researchers a shared week of leave. The source does not say what Hy 4 Preview is beyond its name, so we won't guess at its capabilities.

The DeepSeek line

The most quoted part of the profile is how he motivates people. One Hunyuan member said Yao told them they couldn't copy DeepSeek and skip overtime, but they could work to make DeepSeek start putting in overtime too.

It is a joke with an edge: DeepSeek is treated as the benchmark to beat, and the pressure is framed as competition rather than an order.

Fixing friction

The profile also shows some practical management. New interns and campus hires said researchers felt disconnected, so Yao pushed for a dedicated chat group for the incoming campus-hire class.

He also tells staff that if tools are unreliable, resources are hard to get or other teams are blocking them, they should go straight to whoever owns the problem, and escalate if it isn't handled.