Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

I just checked the SEED Established Staff program application stats. All
materials are due today, Friday, 16 November. Here is where we are so far:

• Applicants: 95
• Completed Applications: 65
• By Org:
  • CTO/Sun Labs: 2 [ 2% ]
  • GSS: Systems Practice: 1 [ 1% ]
  • Microelectronics: 8 [ 8% ]
  • Sales (GSS): 16 [ 17% ]
  • Services (GSS): 16 [ 17% ]
  • Software Group: 37 [ 39% ]
  • Storage Group: 4 [ 4% ]
  • Systems Group: 9 [ 9% ]
  • Worldwide Operations: 2 [ 2% ]
• By Work Location:
  • APAC (Asia Pacific): 3 [ 3% ]
  • Central USA: 11 [ 12% ]
  • China: 12 [ 13% ]
  • Czech Republic: 5 [ 5% ]
  • EMEA (Europe Middle East Africa): 4 [ 4% ]
  • Eastern USA: 7 [ 7% ]
  • France: 3 [ 3% ]
  • India: 8 [ 8% ]
  • Ireland: 3 [ 3% ]
  • Russia: 1 [ 2% ]
  • Western USA: 36 [ 38% ]
  • no response: 1 [ 1% ]

Tanya Jankot and I am reading the applications and getting back to
applicants and their managers with concerns or requests for completion.

More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

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

I am on jury duty this week (that is, actually a member of a
jury, for the
first time). It is fascinating but I cannot talk about it until his
honor the Judge gives his OK. I am home on a break between sessions right
now. I was able to join the first half of yesterday morning’s SEED applicant and
manager call in meeting before jury session started. However, I missed this
morning’s all-SEED monthly phone-in meeting.

Michelle Dennedy Sun’s Chief Privacy Officer was SEED’s guest speaker.
I am looking forward to listening to the recording once is it available.

I just checked the SEED Established Staff application stats. All materials
are due this Friday, 16 November. Here is where we are so far:

• Applicants: 60
• Completed Applications: 20
• By Org:
  • GSS: Systems Practice: 1 [ 2% ]
  • Microelectronics: 4 [ 7% ]
  • Sales (GSS): 11 [ 18% ]
  • Services (GSS): 10 [ 17% ]
  • Software Group: 25 [ 42% ]
  • Storage Group: 4 [ 7% ]
  • Systems Group: 4 [ 7% ]
  • Worldwide Operations: 1 [ 2% ]
• By Work Location:
  • APAC (Asia Pacific): 1 [ 2% ]
  • Central USA: 6 [ 10% ]
  • China: 10 [ 17% ]
  • Czech Republic: 3 [ 5% ]
  • EMEA (Europe Middle East Africa): 3 [ 5% ]
  • Eastern USA: 5 [ 8% ]
  • France: 3 [ 5% ]
  • India: 5 [ 8% ]
  • Ireland: 1 [ 2% ]
  • Russia: 1 [ 2% ]
  • Western USA: 22 [ 37% ]

I am reading the applications during breaks and after jury sessions end.
Tanya Jankot is handling most of the email and phone calls from applicants
and managers with questions.
More information on the SEED Engineering mentoring program is available at

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

Our discussions about extending the SEED mentoring program to a larger population within
Sun Engineering are making good progress. We passed one executive review this week and
have another scheduled for next month. We will be sending out a survey to recent SEED
participants’ managers asking for their views soon.

I am on jury duty this week and next but answering email and voice mail questions
during off days and on breaks. Applications for the new worldwide term for
Established Staff are coming in: 26 so far with 7 complete. The new term will run
January through June 2008. Applications are due 16 November. We will have a phone-in
question and answer session for applicants and managers on 13 November 2007, 8 a.m. PST.

More information on SEED is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

While we are in discussions about a proposed extension of the SEED
Engineering mentoring program, we have also just announced a new
worldwide term for Established Staff. The new term will run January through
June 2008. Applications are due 16 November. The opening of the application
period was announced by Sun’s CTO

Greg Papadopoulos on 1 November 2007. We have received 13 applications
so far.

SEED’s four basic General Selection Criteria are:

1. All Participants are in Engineering.
2. Only regular Sun employees may participate.
3. Superior annual performance ratings are preferred.
4. Manager support is required.

In addition, there are two specific selection criteria for
Established Staff:

1. Hold a senior position: they must be at a Principal job level or above.
2. Have been with Sun for two or more years as of the term start month.
   That is, this term’s applicants must have been hired before 2006.

SEED Preferred Accomplishment Areas for Established Staff

(applicants are expected to excel in many but not all of these areas):

SEED plans to accept up to 40 participants for this Established Staff term.
More information on SEED is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

I haven’t been writing much about mentoring in my blog because we are in
the process of designing a new pilot mentoring program and are still in
discussions. However, today I made a presentation about
SEED (Sun’s world-wide
Engineering mentoring program) to another company. As often happens, in
answering questions in a different context, I understood what I was
explaining in a new way. This is to try to explain SEED’s model in the new way again
so I don’t forget what I said…

One of the problems of the SEED program is that is does not scale. SEED relies
on hand-matching of each pair rather than on an automated system. This means
that SEED can handle only 200 to 250 participants (or mentees or proteges) in about
six terms a year. There are two reasons why SEED has chosen hand-matching:

• About 3/4 of SEED’s mentors are senior executives (Directors, Distinguished
  Engineers, Fellows, Vice Presidents) who are likely to have remarkable accomplishments
  and better-than-average communication skills but also require individualized support
  to be able to participate. The program is run to ensure ease of participation and convenience of Mentors. Mentors who are happy with their experience recommend SEED to
  others. Also, SEED has found that the source of the request for an executive to become
  a mentor matters. A trusted source seems to return a higher number of acceptances
  to mentor match requests.
• Participants are asked to add names to their SEED Mentor Wish List primarily
  because of the
  potential mentors’ accomplishments, experience, personality, capabilities, or skills.
  In creating their Mentor Wish List, each SEED participant needs to make two hard
  decisions:
  1. What they want to learn
  2. Who has already accomplished the kind of things they want to do
     (that is, who is already down the path that they see themselves walking)

  That is, SEED encourages participants to pick based on the mentee’s review and
  analysis of what potential mentors have already done rather than on
  self-identified lists of capabilities provided by a mentor.

Other mentoring programs do use self-identified lists of capabilities. Such lists
allow automated mentor-mentee matching on a large scale. One popular program creates
an average of 2,000 mentoring relationships a year. However, not everyone
is good at knowing what they are good at. For more, read: Justin Kruger and David
Dunning (Cornell University),

“Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(from the APA – American Psychological Association): December 1999, Vol. 77, No.6, 1121-1134.

By preferring executive mentors who have remarkable accomplishments and
then asking mentees to request mentors based what they have already demonstrated,
SEED seeks to avoid the problems of mistaken self-identified competencies. However,
this also means that the SEED program does not scale.

More information on SEED is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

We have the feedback from participants in last week’s annual

SEED Event. 34 people responded to our survey, out of about 80
SEED mentees, managers, and mentors who joined the meeting in person or
by phone from around the world.

Using the following response scale: (very poor = 1, neutral = 4, very good = 7),
the highest average score among the nine questions was 6.19, rating
“Arrangements for the meeting (advance information, event web page, room size, location, room temperature)”; the lowest was 5.28, rating the
“SEED Showcase presentations”.

Here are some comments from the surveys:

• It is great that the presentations are about Sun’s new products, advanced technologies, strategies or of help for engineer’s career plan and development.
• Especially I really liked the technical presentation.
• The presentations are informative. I learned a lot that I didn’t know but wanted to know (such as the details on
  Blackbox).
• Very amusing, I learned several interesting facts. Tour guide Excellent !
• Was not aware of how our product design came from, but when standing in the special black room [of the Usability Lab], I got the answer
• Nice people, really friendly atmosphere where even such introvert like myself could feel like at home 🙂
• Awesome – met some great people and made several new contacts.
• Participated remotely. Could hear fine and appreciated having the presentations posted on the website.
• Room was a bit cold for those not used to real aircon 🙂
• A little tough to sit through that many presentations on the phone in a row and stay focused. I’d recommend breaking up the speakers a little bit.
• Worked well – presos in the morning, while folks are awake 🙂
• I think that you did a good job of making remote participants involved in the discussions.
• I think the variety of speakers was a good idea

We are now setting up the schedule for SEED’s 2007-2008 monthly phone-in
meetings.
More information on SEED is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

The SEED Engineering mentoring program big annual event here on Sun’s Menlo
Park campus last week felt like a success. It certainly was enjoyable to
meet everyone in person. We are still collecting feedback surveys but the
informal responses were very enthusiastic.

About 80 people from all over the world
attended the two day event to hear executives speak, take lab
tours, go to dinner together, and spend time getting to know each other.
The tours (of the Enterprise Technology Center, plus two usability labs) and
the dinner were sold out with waiting lists.
We also held two sets of three talks by SEED participants, called the
“SEED Showcase”, moderated by SEED Poorna Udupi.

The speakers were inspired and fascinating. Executives speaking to the SEEDs
included:

• 
  Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Chief Technology Officer and Executive
  Vice President of Research and Development
  
  SEED program executive sponsor
  
• Mike Splain, Senior Vice President, Sun Fellow,
  Chief Engineer
  
  4 time SEED Mentor
  
• 
  Dr. Whitfield Diffie, Vice President, Sun Fellow,
  Chief Security Officer
  
  4 time SEED Mentor
  
• Diann Olden, Vice President, Global Product Development & Operations,
  Software
  
  7 time SEED Mentor
  
• 
  Dr. Sheueling Chang-Shantz, Distinguished Engineer,
  Sun Microsystems Laboratories
  
  7 time SEED Mentor
  
• Jud Cooley, Senior Director of Engineering,
  Project Blackbox
  
  2 time SEED Mentor
  

More information on SEED is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Here are some event photos:

Whit Diffie:

Diann Olden:

Greg Papadopoulos:

Images Copyright 2007 by Katy Dickinson