Since the 9 June deadline, Tanya Jankot and I have worked with Sun’s Human
Resources records to review the 169 SEED applications which were submitted on
time. 121 of the 169 were complete and verified by HR. Yesterday, I passed the
27 eligible Recent Hire (RH) applications to the 2008-2009 executive Selection Committee
for review. The Recent Hire and Established Staff selections will
be made and announced on 18 June.
There is a wide seniority range among the RH applicants: from Sun
Grade 5 (Member of the Technical Staff 2) through Grade 13 (Director). This term,
SEED has modified is scope and welcomed acquired staff as RH
candidates within 9 months of their acquisition date.
The job of the RH Selection Committee is to sort the applications assigned to
each of them into L-Low, M-Medium, or H-High buckets. Giving someone a H-High
rating means that in the Selection Committee member’s opinion, that person has
a good potential over time to rise to the top of Sun Engineering’s individual
contributor or management ranks.
Why not accept them all? Because we have unfortunately found in prior
terms that just meeting the basic SEED criteria does not mean an
applicant can be expected to rise to the top of Sun Engineering’s
individual contributor or management ranks. If I am going to ask
senior or executive Sun staff to accept a SEED mentee and spend a year
coaching them, the mentee should be a rising star with potential for
notable success in Sun Engineering.
Each SEED application is read independently
by at least two Selection Committee members. Each member ends up reading about
the same number of applications. The discussions are often around differences
of interpretation (usually for an Applicant rated High by one and Low by
another) and around how many Medium/Mediums to include to achieve an
appropriate level of diversity among the Participants. Diversity is considered
in terms of demographics, geographic work location, and professional area
within Engineering (software, microelectronics, labs, storage, etc.).
So long as they have one or more Medium/Medium (or higher) ranked Applicants,
every Sun division gets at least one Applicant accepted.
After the selections are announced on 18 June, I will not tell RH applicants what
rating they got (H, M, or L). However, I will tell their managers their staff member’s rating if the manager calls to talk about it. I will not tell anyone
who on the Selection Committee gave which rating. Some terms, 30 or more managers call to get specific information on the case of their staff members. I will not
refer any managers to the Selection Committee.
More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/
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