Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

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/

As expected, the winter break was a very quiet time for matching SEED
program participants with new mentors. However, the pace has picked up
today as Sun Engineering returns to work. By the end of 2007, we had 40 out of 50
matched (78% were matched in the first ten days of the cycle). We have had three
new matches today (for 43 total, or 86% matched so far). This SEED Established Staff
term will run January-July 2008.

3 of the new mentors are Fellows, 12 are Vice Presidents, 16 are Directors, and
7 are Distinguished Engineers (that is: 88% executive mentors so far).

More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

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

I don’t expect to match more than one or two more of the SEED mentoring
program participants before the new year. The last match was on 20 December.
We matched 78% (39 out of 50) participants in the first ten days of
the cycle. I think this is a program speed record! However,
most people are now home with their families and letting their email
and work be for a while. This SEED Established Staff term will run
January-July 2008.

More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

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

This morning, the current SEED matching cycle entered its second half.
In our first week of matching, 27 out of the 50 mentoring program
participants have been matched with mentors. This SEED
Established Staff term will run January-July 2008. I want to
make as many matches as possible before the term officially starts.

There will be very few matches after this coming week and typically
there are no matches at all Christmas week, so I am doing my best to
encourage potential mentors to give me their decisions very soon.

More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

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

Yesterday, I started matching the Participants and Mentors for the SEED
Established Staff term which will run January-July 2008. I
sent out the first fifty email invitations yesterday and got two
acceptance emails immediately. We have 9 acceptances so far –
41 to go!

Everyone who is not yet matched now has the hard job of waiting patiently
for potential mentors to reply. It will take about six weeks to match all
fifty of the current SEED Participants. There will be very few matches
during the last weeks of the year since so many people are on vacation.

The matching time for each individual varies quite a bit. Some people
are matched within a day of the first SEED Mentor Request email going
out, others take the full six weeks. Each potential
Mentor may have multiple email, phone, or personal contacts with SEED
program staff. Potential Mentors are contacted serially in the priority
order given on the participant’s Mentor Wish List. Each one may take a long
time to respond and then decide. The time it takes to make a match
partially depends on the number and seniority of Participants and the
availability and seniority of the potential Mentors requested. Senior
Participants and very senior potential Mentors often take longer to match.
Senior Participants who represent the local maximum
professionally (the “go-to person” for Sun on a topic) may be
particularly difficult to match. If the Mentor and Mentee are matched
after the actual start of the term, the mentoring partnership still
lasts for six months from the match date, regardless of when the SEED
term formally ends.

I will send out email and blog updates from time to time.
The Participants are not kept informed of each step in the match process.
Potential mentors need to have space and time to consider the
possibilities of a mentoring partnership without risk of offending the
potential Mentee or interfering with future communications with them or
their manager.

More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

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

Tanya Jankot has received HR’s verification of the SEED mentoring
program applicants’ information (titles, job grades, hire dates,
performance ratings, etc.) and is checking that against the submitted
information. The SEED Selection Committee meets tomorrow, on 28 November
2007. We expect to pick about 40 participants out of the 104 applicants.
I will announce final selections tomorrow.

More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

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