PreSEED Mentoring Program Announced

Tanya Jankot and I have been working for many months to develop a
new version of Sun’s popular worldwide Engineering mentoring program.
Yesterday, PreSEED was announced to the 5 Software Director groups which
will be in the pilot term! Hooray! PreSEED applications will be
accepted starting 27 January 2008. The web pages will be available for
review but not submission in advance of 27 January 2008. The first fifty
complete and verified applicants will be accepted.

Software Chief Technologists

Bob Brewin (Distinguished Engineer and Vice President) and

Tim Marsland (Fellow and Vice President) are PreSEED’s pilot term Champions.

Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) is the SEED
program executive sponsor.

What is PreSEED?

PreSEED is a new mentoring pilot program aimed at helping Sun
Engineering staff who have been getting almost all “Sun Standard” annual
performance ratings onto a path which may lead them to higher
engagement. One way to think of PreSEED is as a preliminary to the
successful SEED Engineering worldwide mentoring program. Since 2001,
the CTO-sponsored SEED program has a proven track record of strong
diversity, very high satisfaction, high regard by management, and high
retention. SEED participants as a group earn more promotions and higher
performance ratings than Sun overall. The first PreSEED pilot term
is March-September 2008.

PreSEED is not a rotation program, meaning that the participant
continues to report to their home manager throughout the program. During
the 6-month PreSEED term, Participants (Mentees) work with Mentors for
1 to 2 hours every two weeks (or more, they want).

Why create PreSEED?

Research indicates mentoring of “solid citizens” like Sun Standard
performers will have a greater advantage to Sun’s bottom line than
mentoring of the rising stars who are already the focus of SEED. The
SEED program staff regularly receives many suggestions for improvement
and expansion. PreSEED is being piloted to meet some of the most
common, long-standing, and energetic of these suggestions.

Selection

PreSEED’s four General Selection Criteria are:

1. All Participants are in Engineering.
2. Only regular Sun employees may participate.
3. All annual performance ratings in the last 3 years must be “Sun
   Standard” (a 2) or better.
4. Manager support is required.

More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

http://research.sun.com/SEED/