Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

The worldwide Sun Engineering email announcement from Sun CTO

Greg Papadopoulos went out on 9 November and we have so far
received 8 applications for the SEED Established Staff term. SEED program
participants are expected to rise to the top of Sun Engineering’s
individual contributor or management ranks. All application materials
are due on 24 November. The term will run January 15 – June 15, 2007.
We plan to accept about 40 participants.

Tomorrow is the first of three phone-in question and answer sessions
we have scheduled for potential applicants and their managers.

Tanya Jankot and I are worried about the tight timing of this application
period. We usually start earlier in November but with managing Sun’s involvement in
the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women
in Computing (October 4-7, 2006 in San Diego), shortly followed by the world-wide
SEED Event (24-25 October 2006 in Menlo Park), we have been busy. We allowed
over two weeks for the application period but for the US-based Sun staff, that
time includes the hard-to-get-any-work-done 2 days during Thanksgiving.

The problem is that in the US, the winter holidays come so fast after Thanksgiving
that from now, what with family travel, distracting-if-fun parties, and official
days off, there are only really five working weeks left in 2006. SEED needs
a week to verify application data and then pick the participants. The participants
need a week to prepare their 15 name Mentor Wish Lists. Also, we want to include at
least two weeks of mentor matching time in before 2007. This is a very close schedule.

SEED runs into this problem for every term we run. We maintain a World Schedule to
avoid national, religious, and company holidays as best we can but we still
ended up with the term for India running into Divali, the term for China overlapping Labor Day, the term for Russia starting during Russian Orthodox Christmas,
and the annual SEED event getting too close to Rosh Hashana. Every term, we
get pleas for extensions to respect or allow for one event, holiday, observance, or
another. We long ago decided that no time is convenient for everyone.

The email just went out from CTO Greg Papadopoulos to Sun world-wide Engineering
announcing the start of the application period for the 18th SEED Engineering
mentoring term. This will be a six month term (January through June 2007)
for Established Staff.

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. Must hold a senior position with a title such as Member of the Technical Staff-4, Staff Engineer, Hardware or Software Manager, Senior Staff Engineer, Engineering Director, Distinguished Engineer, etc. That is, they must be at a Principal Engineer level or above.
2. Must have been with Sun for two or more years as of the term start month.

SEED Preferred Accomplishment Areas for Established Staff

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

Tanya Jankot and I had everything ready for the announcement to go out
on Tuesday but with one thing and another, it took a while to get the email actually sent. We have received two applications already! All application materials and
recommendation letters are due the day after Thanksgiving (24 November). Between
now and then Tanya and I will hold three phone-in information meetings and be
answering hundreds of questions… Greg’s email going out is like the starting
gate opening on a horse race.

An article which mentions Sun’s SEED Engineering mentoring program
was recently published in InfoWorld:

“20 ways to get promoted in the tech industry” by Dan Tynan, October 16, 2006.
The whole article is well worth reading – look for the SEED reference in
item #10. Here are the twenty ways:

1. Think Business First, Technology Second
2. Raise the Bar … and Leave It There
3. Hold Your Nose and Raise Your Hand
4. Don’t Pass the Buck
5. Be a Lone Voice in the Wilderness
6. Back Down Gracefully
7. Develop a Killer App
8. Stay on the Cutting Edge
9. Feed Your Mind
10. Find Your Yoda
11. Take Deadlines Personally
12. Share the Wealth
13. Be Your Own Cheerleader
14. Build Your Own Portfolio
15. Schmooze It or Lose It
16. Walk and Talk
17. Hire Your Own Replacements
18. Embrace the Gray Areas
19. Keep Your Nose Clean (Not Brown)
20. Consider a Switch — for the Right Reasons

The SEED Engineering mentoring program holds its big kick-off event
tomorrow and Wednesday here in Menlo Park, California. SEED holds monthly
phone-in meetings plus two in-person annual events: this two-day meeting in
September plus a one-day meeting in March. Over 100 people are signed up
for the event. We have participants who have travelled here from
China, Czech Rep., France, Germany, India, Ireland, Russia, The Netherlands,
and the UK.

Executive speakers tomorrow include:

• 
  Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President

• 
  Juan Carlos Soto, Vice President of Adoption Marketing and Technology Evangelism
  
  Talk Title: “Career Paths”

• 
  Ivan Sutherland, Sun Fellow and Vice President
  
  Talk Title: “On Leadership”

• 
  Leslie Lambert, VP & Chief Architect for Sun IT
  
  Talk Title: “What Sun IT is Looking for from Sun Engineering Leadership”

HR Director for the CTO Carol Gorski and I are also giving a repeat of our SEED
talk at the Grace Hopper Celebration of
Women in Computing 2006: “5 Years of Mentoring by the Numbers”. Part of
each day is devoted to the SEED Showcase (brief presentations on current work
by SEED participants, past and present). The SEEDs will eat lunch together and then
go on afternoon tours.

For this event, Tanya Jankot has arranged these tours:

• Sun’s Menlo Park
  Enterprise Technology Center

• Sun’s Menlo Park
  Executive Briefing Center (EBC)

• Sun’s xDesign Menlo Park
  Usability Labs

• Computer History Museum
  in Mountain View

• Sun Labs in Menlo Park

This event is by invitation only. SEED program participants, their managers and
mentors from any term are invited.

All 82 of the SEED participants in the 2006-2007 Terms (Recent Hires,
September 2006-September 2007, and Established Staff, September
2006-March 2007) were matched with mentors as of 27 September.
77% of the mentors are executives: 16 Vice Presidents (including
5 VP/Fellows), 26 Directors, and 21 Distinguished Engineers.

Details:

4 SEED 2006-2007 participants were matched more than once due to
their mentor leaving Sun or being unable to serve.

5 SEED participants had to prepare more than one Mentor Wish List.

Location

• 55 mentoring pairs are at a distance (67%)
• 14 work in the same town (17%)
• 13 work in the same area but not the same town (16%)

Priority Patterns

• 38 of the SEED participants were matched with their
  1st or 2nd choice Mentor (46%)

• 16 were matched with their 3rd of 4th choice Mentor (20%)
• 11 were matched with their 5th or 6th choice Mentor (13%)
• 17 were matched with a Mentor lower down on their
  prioritized Mentor Wish List (21%)

Cycle Time

• Matching started on 14 July and ended 27 September:
  a 75 day cycle

• 49% were matched in the first week
  73% were matched in the first two weeks

• 90% were matched in the first month

Gender

• 20 Women Participants (24%)
• 62 Men Participants (76%)
• 16 Women Mentors (20%)
• 66 Men Mentors (80%)

Mentors

• 6 SEED Alumni Returning as Mentors
• 29 Mentors are serving for the 1st time with SEED
• 25 Mentors are in their 2nd time with SEED
• 19 Star Mentors are in their 3rd or 4th time with SEED
• 9 Superstar Mentors are in their 5th more with SEED