Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

The mentor response to the 2006-2007 SEED Engineering mentoring terms
has been very enthusiastic. We matched almost half of the participants
(42 Recent Hires and Established Staff) during the first week and we have
now raised that to 65% (55 matched) before the send of the second week
of matching. 18 of the newly matched mentors are Distinguished Engineers
(including a SEED alumnus who was just promoted to DE) and four are Sun
Fellows.

I always have fun seeing who will take who, not just in terms of individuals
but also in terms of demographic, professional, and geographic patterns. The
match I made just before leaving work was between a Vice President of
Worldwide Operations based in the San Francisco Bay Area with a recently
hired Member of the Technical Staff in the Systems Group based in Burlington,
Massachusetts. I am sure these two women will have fascinating conversations
during their year together.

I have been matching SEED Engineering program participants and
executive mentors since the invitations went out on 14 July. So far, 25
out of the 85 Recent Hires and Established Staff have been matched.
29% of the total matched in less than a week is a good rate.

As the SEED program matures,
we (the program staff) get more knowledgeable on what encourages
a mentor to respond quickly and positively. Also, every year, more
people have served as mentors or have expressed willingness to do so.
People with knowledge of the program respond faster than those who
have never heard of us.

One of the patterns we watch in the SEED program is the gender
balance of both participants and mentors. Slightly less than a
third of the SEED participants in these terms are female and
about the same number of the new mentors are also female.
SEED women mentors are more likely to accept women
participants as mentees (historically, half of SEED’s women
mentors chose to mentor other women).

I was on the monthly call for the
NCWIT (the National Center for Women & Information Technology)
Workforce Alliance group yesterday. We talked about SEED as an example
of a program that attracts senior technical women in disproportionately
high numbers. Partly, this is because SEED has a special group dedicated
to “Established Staff”. That is, Engineering staff (both men and women)
who are at a senior level who have been with Sun for over 2 years.
Also, since SEED started, we have found that women and
non-US staff take advantage of the SEED program at a consistently
higher rate than their representation overall.

How do we know what the Engineering population mix is overall?

In addition to internal knowledge of our own Sun Engineering population,
we in the SEED program also keep an eye on population patterns in the
Engineering profession at large. A small example: since building
Sun’s Engineering Community is one of SEED’s goals, I keep track of
how many SEED former participants or mentees (a.k.a. SEED alumni)
volunteer as SEED mentors later. I just worked out that 16% of the
people who have asked SEED to be added to the “Potential SEED Mentors”
list were once SEED participants themselves. Of that 16% of SEED
alumni volunteering to serve as mentors, 33% are women.

I ask myself: is 33% women good?

I know from having read Tracy Camp’s 1997 paper

“The Incredible Shrinking Pipeline” that the ratio of women taking Computer Science degrees dropped from 1982 (36% women awarded BA/BS degrees
in CS) through 1994 (28% women awarded BA/BS degrees in CS).
According to
NCWIT’s, 2005 publication “Women and
Information Technology By the Numbers”, that there was also
a 42% decline in the number of incoming undergraduate students
choosing to major in Computer Science between 2001 and 2005.
The NCWIT document says that 29% of Computer Scientists in 2003
were female, and 29% of the 2004 U.S. professional information
technology workforce was female.

So, in as much as the people on the “Potential SEED Mentors” list
represent the same population as IT and Computer Scientists, 33% is good. However, I know there are many other professional and
Engineering disciplines represented on that list. When I check
statistics on the
Society of Women Engineers
web page on
Engineering Disciplines, I find that most Engineering disciplines have
far lower than 29% women. So, the 33% I am trying to evaluate is probably
somewhere between good and very good when compared with Engineering as
a profession.

On 15 June, we selected the 86 participants in the Sun Engineering Enrichment
and Development (SEED) program for the 2006-2007 terms in both the Recent
Hire and the Established staff groups. There were 267 applications. As
usual, women and non-US staff took advantage of the SEED program at a consistently higher rate than their representation in Engineering overall.
Over half of the new participants work outside of the U.S. Close to a third
of the new SEEDs are female.

Since the 15 June announcements, participants have been putting together
their Mentor Wish Lists (due two days from now). Before Sun’s summer break
last week, I spent about half of my time talking with managers of
applicants who were not accepted. Direct managers who want feedback on
specific selection decisions about their staff are welcome to call me.

The application period for the 2006-2007 worldwide SEED Engineering
mentoring program ends in under 26 hours (at midnight PST on 12 June).
SEED has 222 applications so far. Only 84 are complete (application
form, resume, and all
letters of recommendation are in). We are going to have a very busy
day tomorrow. The selection decisions will be made and announced
on 15 June.

Tanya Jankot and I are working with the materials and applicants
now to give everyone a chance to show as well as they can. Quite a few
applicants either left off key information or gave a garbled version
of their titles, grade levels, hire year, etc. Some writers of
letters gave a “1” Recommendation Level (meaning Not Recommended) after
writing an evaluation which clearly indicated strong positive support.
We are getting back to each of them to ask if they want to change their
rating to a 6 or 7 (where 7 = Strongly Recommended). Most are making the
change.

Just over half of the applicants work in the USA. We are getting a strong
showing from China, Czech Republic, India, and Russia. About 20 people
have been disqualified, usually because they are too junior for the
Established Staff program. Some of them are very disappointed; however,
the SEED program has very limited resources and is tightly scoped to
support the people our analysis shows will benefit most from
the program’s offerings. Even though it is necessary, it is painful
to exclude worthy people.

Tanya and I also moved offices last week (just across the courtyard)
and we are now settling into Sun Menlo Park building 16 with Sun Labs.
We had the first of our weekly teas on Thursday and entertained
a mix of our usual tea crowd plus some new local visitors.
Ever since my 20 boxes arrived on Friday morning, I have been trying
to find the particular box with one thing or another in it.
They haven’t finished cleaning or painting my office so I don’t want
to unpack too much yet. So far, I have found my teacup, business cards,
paper pads and post-it notes and my stapler (but not my staples). I
have gotten the local printer to work and found the outgoing U.S. Mail
drop point.

So far, so good!

104 applications have been received for the SEED Engineering
mentoring worldwide 2006-2007 terms so far. All materials are due
Monday, 12 June. The selection decisions will be made and announced
on 15 June.

Tanya Jankot and I are working with the applicants and managers,
answering questions and making corrections. She and I are scheduled
to move offices (from Sun Menlo Park building 17 to
MPK16) on Thursday but our email and websites should not be effected
by the move. We will soon be in the Sun Labs area of the campus.

Tanya and I plan to serve our regular weekly SEED tea and
cookies in our new building at the usual time: 4-6 p.m. Thursday, starting
on 8 June. SEED alumni, current participants, managers, and mentors,
and applicants are welcome to join us for tea and conversation.

With 82 SEED mentoring program applicants so far and everything
due on Monday (12 June), Tanya Jankot and I have started to
sort through the materials. Patterns I see so far:

• Only 11 applicants have sent in all of their basic materials
  (application form, resume, manager’s recommendation letter) and are
  qualified for selection. Some of those 11 still need to submit
  executive letters of recommendation.

• 9 applicants have perfect annual performance ratings
  (all “1” or Superior ratings) and almost certainly will be accepted
  so long as they provide all of their application materials.

• 12 applicants have been disqualified – mostly for not meeting the
  minimum seniority requirement for the Established Staff program

I just finished sending email to the disqualified applicants and their
managers.

So far, we have received 75 SEED mentoring program applications.
All materials are due 12 June. 25 of the applications are from
Recent Hires and 50 are from Established Staff potential participants.
I have 8 executives confirmed as members of the Recent Hire Selection
Committee; I am looking for one more Distinguished Engineer, on the
US East Coast if possible.

Both the Recent Hire and Established
Staff selections will be on 15 June, with email announcements going
out that same day. We have scheduled a 3rd phone-in question-and-answer
meeting with potential applicants, managers, and mentors on 7 June.
Tanya Jankot and I are getting lots of questions and the application
process seems to be going well.