Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

We have over 3/4 of the SEED Engineering mentoring participants
matched with mentors already (37 out of 49). I hope to match a
few more next week but most will probably be matched after the
new year starts. For those who have next week as a holiday and
end-of-year break week: have a restful time and a Happy New Year!

I am surprised at how many mentor matches I have been able
to make in this week just before Sun’s winter break. So
far, we have 35 or 71% matched out of the 49 participants.
Our mentors matched so far include 17 Distinguished Engineers
and Directors plus 9 Vice Presidents.

I think many of the remaining mentees are going to end
up waiting until the first week of 2007 because
potential mentors will be out of the office and not responding
to my reminders. However, I
was pleasantly surprised today when a potential mentor whose vacation
email had just popped back saying he was out until 8 January sent me
email and asked for more information on the participant. He said he
would let me know his decision by Friday, 22 December. The SEED
mentoring term officially starts on 15 January so I have some matching
time after the winter break.

I set a personal goal to match more than half of the 49 SEED Engineering mentoring
program participants in our current Established Staff term before the start of
Sun’s winter break next week. (trumpet sounds!) Already today, we have reached 26
out of 49 matched (that’s 53%)!

So far, we have 6 Vice Presidents plus 13 Directors or Distinguished Engineers who
have generously agreed to spend six months mentoring program participants. All of
the senior executives working on Sun’s Beijing campus (the Sun China Engineering
Research Institute in Tsinghua Science Park) have signed up as mentors this
term.

I expect some slow down in the pace of matching as this week progresses and people
take off on vacations. However, I will continue monitoring the conversations in email
to see how many more connections I can make despite the holiday week. Progress is
good for getting everyone matched before the term formally starts on 15 January 2007.

Monday, I sent out 49 emails asking potential mentors, mostly
executives, to consider taking a SEED Engineering mentoring program
participant for their mentee for the six month 15 January-15 June 2007 term.
So far, 9 have accepted that invitation. Our newest SEED mentors (some
of whom have served as mentors in prior SEED terms) include a Vice
President, 2 Distinguished Engineers, and 2 Directors. They are based
in Beijing China, California, Colorado, Hamburg Germany, and New Mexico.
I hope to get at least half of this term’s participants matched before
Sun’s winter break week starts.

SEED just had its regular monthly phone in meeting. Today’s speakers were
a panel from Sales speaking on “The View from the Field”. Tim Van Loan, a
2003-2004 SEED participant and Sun Sales executive based in San Francisco
put together the panel.
The topic was popular, with 52 people calling in from all over the USA plus
Canada, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Texas,
and elsewhere.

Phone in meetings work best when people who are not speaking
put their phones on mute. Today, everyone was good and the sound quality
was excellent. It is worst when someone puts the phone in call on hold and
everyone has to listen to their bad “hold music” until we give up and restart
the call. Second worst phone in behavior is when a caller is not on mute and
has a noisy background. Listening to someone wash dishes or shout at their
dog while trying to hold a business call is miserable.

All 49 of the SEED Engineering mentoring participants for the current
Established Staff term got their Mentor Wish Lists in by this
morning’s deadline. Tanya Jankot had already prepared all 49 participant
web pages for review by potential mentors. Once Tanya closed down the
list submission web page, she cleaned up the request summary list (fixing
name spellings mostly). Then, together she and I reviewed the list and prepared the first contact list. List edits
during this review included:

• Removing names of requested Mentors who already
  indicated that they are unavailable to act as a Mentor.
• Removing names of Mentors who are still working
  with a SEED participant from a prior term.
• Removing names of requested Mentors
  who are not senior enough. (SEED mentors must be
  the global equivalent of U.S. job grade
  level 10 and above.)
• Removing names of requested Mentors
  who are too senior. (Executives above Senior Vice
  President don’t have the time required by the SEED program
  of its participating mentors.)
• We made a decision in each case where more than one
  Participant requested the same potential Mentor.
  This is a common problem: as many as 15 people
  requested the same Mentor. The primary basis for
  this decision was the priority order on the Mentor Wish List
  provided by the Participant. The Participant’s seniority (title or number of years at Sun) was used as a tiebreaker, with the more senior Participant getting preference. If they were the same seniority, we
  went with whoever wrote the most convincing reason for preference.

After this review, we had our working contact list with the highest priority eligible Mentor from each participant’s Mentor Wish List.
For 31 of the participants, the highest priority eligible Mentor was also
their #1 choice. For 11 more, the highest priority eligible Mentor was
their #2 choice. For the rest, we had to go lower on their list.

I sent out all 49 emails asking that each potential mentor consider the
SEED participant who had requested them. Two Distinguished Engineers
responded immediately, writing they were interested and will follow up
with their potential mentee. We hope to hear back from the
others soon. All 49 participants should be matched within 2 months.

The SEED Engineering mentoring “Mentor Wish Lists” are due
in about 11 hours. SEED participants give us 15 prioritized names and
reasons for preferring those potential mentors. Then, I work from
their lists to find them a match. 42 out of the 49 participants
have gotten in their lists already. Tanya Jankot and I have
been reviewing lists and giving feedback all week. Tomorrow,
we close down the list submission web page and start to
contact potential mentors. I hope to match at least half of
this term before the winter break.

Creating a potential mentor list is time consuming and challenging.
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)

The SEED Engineering mentoring program takes a long-term view and does not have a preference for one kind of learning over another. That is, the mentoring partnership learning does not have to have anything to do with the participant’s current job. Some people want to learn to be better technical managers, others want to know how to get their ideas to customers faster. Many want to improve their soft skills: public presentation or speaking, negotiating, conflict management, and coaching. Still others want to improve their work and family balance and still have a great career. It takes time and mature consideration to work through all of this. Creating the Mentor Wish List is probably the hardest part of the SEED program.

On 28 November, we of the SEED selection committee picked the participants
for the 15 January – 15 June 2007 Established Staff mentoring term. 104
applications came in by and after the 24 November deadline. 78 of the applications were complete (meaning that the application form, resume, and required letters of recommendation were received by the deadline).

We very much appreciate the time and trouble that all applicants and
their managers put into their SEED materials. It requires a great deal of
work to apply and we thank them. Unfortunately, SEED received more
applications than the program can accommodate. Because this group was
exceptionally accomplished, the selection was very difficult. We were
finally able to pick 49 participants.

We don’t really know until the selection meeting how the applicants
will compare against each other. In the time between the deadline and
the selection meeting, Tanya Jankot and I independently read the applications
and make notes. We confer a few times to check expectations and
interpretations. We also get information from Human Resources confirming
or correcting information on the applications (hire date, annual
performance ratings, job grade level mostly). Sometimes, we even
call managers to verify questionable information.

Some of the measures of the new SEED participants:

• 22% are managers.
• 24% are women.
• 33% were recommended by one or more Vice Presidents, Fellows, or Distinguished Engineers. Most of the rest were recommended by Directors.
• 37% had applied to SEED before (28% of those had applied twice before).
  SEED gives extra credit for persistence!

• 53% earned two or three Superior (“1”) annual performance ratings in the last 3 years.
• They work in 13 countries (Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, USA, and UK).
• They come from 17 countries (China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Ireland, Lebanon, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, USA, UK, and Vietnam).

I am looking forward to working with this extraordinary group of
talented Engineering staff.