Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

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.

We received 102 applications by last Friday’s deadline for Sun’s worldwide Engineering mentoring program, SEED. The SEED Established Staff term will run 15 January – 15 June 2007. All application materials were due 24 November 2006.

79 applications were complete. Tanya Jankot and I spent today checking, sorting, and
making updates based on emails. 25 applicants were disqualified for being too junior or
for not turning in their materials on time. I have sent many emails today returning
late applications, recommendations, and resumes and discouraging further submissions
since we do not accept materials after the deadline.

The selection decisions will be announced tomorrow afternoon. We expect to pick about
40 Established Staff term participants. I have been reading application forms and
letters since Friday. It will be very hard to pick from such an
impressively qualified group.

We have received 79 applications so far to Sun’s worldwide Engineering mentoring
program, SEED. The SEED Established Staff term will run 15 January-16 June 2007.
All application materials are due this Friday, 24 November 2006.

38 of the 79 applications have been completed but 13 others have already been disqualified.
I have sent email to all 13 and to their managers. All were disqualified for being too
junior for an Established Staff term, which requires among other criteria that participants
be at Principal level (Sun U.S. grade 9 equivalent) or above.

I held the last two phone-in presentation-and-question sessions yesterday and today.
Usually, the majority of applications come in during the last three days. We are getting
a good number of applications from outside of the western USA (where Sun headquarters is):

• Central USA: 11 [ 14% ]
• China: 11 [ 14% ]
• Czech Republic: 3 [ 4% ]
• EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa): 4 [ 5% ]
• Eastern USA: 6 [ 8% ]
• India: 2 [ 3% ]
• Ireland: 1 [ 1% ]
• Russia: 2 [ 3% ]
• United Kingdom: 3 [ 4% ]
• Western USA: 35 [ 44% ]
• no response: 1 [ 2% ]

On 28 November, we will pick up to 40 participants to form SEED’s
Established Staff term. The selection announcement will go to all applicants
and their managers that same day.

We have received 61 applications so far to Sun’s worldwide Engineering mentoring program, SEED. The SEED Established Staff term will run 15 January-16 June 2007. All application materials are due this Friday, 24 November 2006.

21 of the 61 applications have been completed but 8 others have already been disqualified. All were disqualified for being too junior for an Established Staff term, which requires among other criteria that participants be at Principal level (Sun U.S. grade 9 equivalent) or above.

I am holding two more phone-in presentation-and-question sessions this week: today
at 5 p.m. (in about 40 minutes) and tomorrow at 8 a.m., Pacific time. Usually,
the majority of applications come in during the last three days. We are getting
a good number of applications from outside of the western USA:

• Central USA: 10 [ 16% ]
• China: 5 [ 8% ]
• Czech Republic: 2 [ 3% ]
• EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa): 2 [ 3% ]
• Eastern USA: 5 [ 8% ]
• India: 2 [ 3% ]
• Ireland: 1 [ 2% ]
• Russia: 1 [ 2% ]
• United Kingdom: 3 [ 5% ]
• Western USA: 29 [ 48% ]
• no response: 1 [ 2% ]

On 28 November, we will pick up to 40 participants to form SEED’s
Established Staff term. The selection announcement will go to all applicants
and their managers that same day.

We have received 40 applications so far to Sun’s worldwide Engineering mentoring program, SEED. The SEED Established Staff term will run 15 January-16 June 2007.
All application materials are due this Friday, 24 November 2006.

12 of the 40 applications have been completed but 4 others have already been disqualified. All four were disqualified for being too junior for an Established Staff term, which requires among other criteria that participants be at Principal level (Sun U.S. grade 9 equivalent) or above.

I am holding two more phone-in presentation-and-question sessions this week: tomorrow at
5 p.m. and Wednesday at 8 a.m., Pacific time. Usually, the majority of applications come
in during the last three days. We are getting more applications from outside of the
western USA:

• Central USA: 7 [ 18% ]
• China: 2 [ 5% ]
• Czech Republic: 1 [ 2% ]
• EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa): 1 [ 2% ]
• Eastern USA: 3 [ 8% ]
• India: 2 [ 5% ]
• Russia: 1 [ 2% ]
• United Kingdom: 3 [ 8% ]
• Western USA: 19 [ 48% ]
• no response: 1 [ 2% ]

About a third of the applicants have applied to a prior SEED term as well. Tanya
Jankot is on vacation this week but we set everything up so that I can manage by
myself.

An article was just published called

“Mentors can help women shatter glass ceiling” By Eve Tahmincioglu,
MSNBC.com contributor (Nov 19, 2006). The article is interesting (and I am quoted
in it about Sun’s mentoring program!).

We have received 23 applications so far to Sun’s worldwide Engineering mentoring
program, SEED. The SEED Established Staff term will run 15 January-16 June
2007. All application materials are due 24 November 2006.

5 of the 23 applications have been completed but 3 others have been disqualified. All
three were disqualified for being too junior for an Established Staff term, which
requires among other criteria that participants be at Principal level (Sun U.S.
grade 9 equivalent) or above.

In addition to Sun CTO

Greg Papadopoulos sending email to Sun Engineering worldwide announcing this
SEED term, I have also
sent emails to a variety of subgroups, including GENO (Sun’s Global Engineering Org.),
and Sun’s “Employee Resource Groups”. ERG used to be called affinity groups or
diversity groups, all of which is HR talk for “a network of Sun employees who
share a common identity, characteristic, or set of interests”.

A book from which I have learned a great deal is Unlocking the Clubhouse,
Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. In addition to
reading the book and keeping it handy for reference, I have been honored to talk
with each of the authors several different times. Dr. Allan Fisher is the former
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at Carnegie Mellon and is now the
President, CEO, and co-Founder of iCarnegie.
Dr. Jane Margolis is a social scientist now with the

UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

In Unlocking the Clubhouse (ISBN: 0262632691, published in 2001),
I have found a number of specific and helpful suggestions. The book is
focussed on women in computing but the suggestions seem to work well for a wide
variety of groups. The passage I have read most recently is on p.115 (Chapter
7: A Tale of 240 Teachers):

Recruiting Girls

Rule number one, then, is that teachers have to deliberately focus
effort on recruiting girls. If teachers issue a generic recruitment call,
boys turn out. Girls must know that the teacher is talking to them. Sometimes
all it takes is a few minutes of encouragement to fire a girl’s interest and
to give her confidence to take a class.

…Girls do not want to be the only one in the class, so two mottoes emerged:
“Recruit friendship circles” and “Recruit a posse”.

Both of these suggestions (sending targeted invitations rather than only generic
recruitment calls, and also recruiting groups who can then support each other) have
worked very well in the SEED program. Since 2004, SEED has held a number of
“pilot” terms focussed on target groups in Engineering.
Most of those pilots were for staff in a particular geographic area (India,
China, Czech Rep., France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, and Russia) but we also
recently had a pilot SEED term for stars and rising stars among the Engineering
staff Sun acquired with StorageTek.

Holding pilot terms helps to build interest for later regular worldwide SEED terms
also. So far in this SEED application period, we have applications from:

• Central USA: 2 [ 9% ]
• China: 1 [ 4% ]
• Czech Republic: 1 [ 4% ]
• EMEA: 1 [ 4% ]
• Eastern USA: 3 [ 13% ]
• Russia: 1 [ 4% ]
• United Kingdom: 1 [ 4% ]
• Western USA: 12 [ 52% ]
• no response: 1 [ 4% ]