Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

I am very much looking forward to my trip to meet potential SEEDs
in St. Petersburg and Tel Aviv (Herzliya) in January. I wrote a few weeks
ago about filling in the Visa Application to visit
Russia. I just got off the phone with a very patient lady in Sun’s St. Petersburg
office. This is what I understand so far:

It turns out that there are two distinct application processes and fees
for me to travel to Russia on business. The first has to be done in Russia
itself. The second is done with the Russian Consulate General in San Francisco.

In Russia, I need to provide the following:

• Russian Visa Application form (to get a telex number assigned for
  the official invitation)

• Signature on the File form (to charge my credit card)
• RUB 5616 (about USD $195-)

In the USA, I am using
Visa Network to communicate with the Russian
Consulate General in San Francisco. For them, I need to provide:

• Consulate General of the Russian Federation in San Francisco /
  Visa Application form

• Visa Network Order Form
• My Original Passport
• USD $150-

Once the Russian telex is sent to the Consulate General, Visa Network
will take my passport and the application and the fee and get my
actual visa. This is a great deal more complex and expensive than I
was expecting. I am considering getting a new credit card number just
for this trip in case it gets shopped around.

On 22 November, the SEED program staff selected 32 of the 63
applicants from Dublin, Grenoble, Hamburg, and Prague. We had
intended to pick only 25. The new SEED participants are
now putting together their Mentor Wish Lists, due this Friday
(2 December) and then we start the matching process. The actual
term will run January-June 2006.

One of the surprising things about the participant selection
discussions this time was the overall strength and seniority of
the group as a whole. In the last world-wide term, 29% of the
applicants disqualified. That is, one of the required elements
of the application materials (resume, letter of recommendation)
was missing or their ratings were below the program’s minimum
for consideration. For this Dublin, Grenoble, Hamburg, and Prague
term, only 11% disqualified. Having such an evenly strong and
qualified group made the selection much harder:
there were few easy differentiations. This is one reason why we
ended up picking 7 more participants than the 25 we originally intended.

A second surprising thing about the participant selection
discussions this time was that we ended up picking all 11 applicants
from Grenoble, France. While we no intention to divide acceptances evenly
between the 4 sites or proportionally based on site headcount, we also
did not intend to favor one site so strongly. We have been reviewing
the data since we made the final selection to see what might have caused
this unintentional pattern. What happened:

• Distribution of SEED Applications by location:
  • Czech Republic: 24 [ 38% ]
  • France: 11 [ 17% ]
  • Germany: 18 [ 29% ]
  • Ireland: 10 [ 16% ]
• Distribution of SEED Participants by location:
  • Czech Republic: 8 [ 25% ]
  • France: 11 [ 34% ]
  • Germany: 9 [ 28% ]
  • Ireland: 4 [ 12% ]

After looking at the data, three measurements seem to answer the
question of why France did so much better in this particular SEED
selection. They are:

1. None of France’s applications were disqualified/withdrawn
2. A comparatively larger percentage of France’s applicants
   had two or three “Superb-1” annual performance ratings in the last 3 years

3. All of France’s applicants were at principal seniority or higher

Each of these gave France a slight advantage. It seems that the combination
of doing better in all three areas made the big difference. The analyses of the
staff patterns at all 4 sites that we did before the application period did
not indicate any strong advantage of one site in seniority or ratings over
the others. That is, all 4 sites are admirably senior and well qualified.
I think this pattern is particular to this group of
SEED applicants rather than indicating anything about the 4 sites overall.
We will continue to review what might have caused these patterns.

We are now getting ready for our next SEED term, focussed on Engineering staff
in St. Petersburg and Tel Aviv (Herzliya). This second Europe-Middle East term
will run March-September 2006. I have informed the St. Petersburg and Tel Aviv
site managers of these analyses and we will see what changes this makes (if
any) in the patterns of their applications.

I am flying to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this morning to present
on SEED at the NCWIT
Leadership Team and Alliance Meetings held at Carnegie Mellon University.
The mission of NCWIT – National Center for Women & Information
Technology is to ensure that women are fully represented in the
influential world of information technology and computing. They
are holding a panel tomorrow morning with representatives
from telementoring (represented by
Mentornet), academic
faculty mentoring (represented by Georgia Tech), and industry
mentoring (represented by SEED). I will be back late on
18 November.

While I am gone, the very able Tanya Jankot will be responding
to SEED questions. All materials from the 63 applicants from
Dublin, Prague, Hamburg, and Grenoble are due on Friday,
18 November. A quick scan of the submissions as of this morning
shows about ten people have already sent in everything.
The 25 selected SEED participants will be announced on 22 November.

SEED applications from Dublin, Grenoble, Hamburg, and Prague
are due in 2-1/2 hours (midnight, California time today, 14 November).
There are 61 so far:

• Czech Republic: 24 [ 39% ]
• France: 10 [ 16% ]
• Germany: 17 [ 28% ]
• Ireland: 10 [ 16% ]

After the application form is disabled, Tanya Jankot and I have
a busy time putting together the statistics (grade levels,
demographic patterns, organizational affiliation, etc.), working
with Human Resources to verify key data against Sun’s employee
database, and answering questions from applicants and their managers.

All materials (resumes, letters of recommendation, etc.) are due
18 November. The 25 selected for this term will be announced on 22 November.

While I was visiting Sun Engineering in Hamburg, I
stayed at the Hotel Hafen Hamburg at the port. My room was
in the older part of the hotel with a view of the pier of St. Pauli
and the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship. There was great excitement
about the ship being in town: at least 3 people told me about it.

I am not a fan of cruise ships, having been SCUBA diving
and seen their effect on the underwater environment. Looking out my
window at the Queen Mary 2 brought to mind our most recent dive vacation.
On the last day, John and I went diving at Eden Rock right off the main
shopping area of Georgetown in the Grand Caymans (south of Cuba).
To get to Eden Rock from Sunset House, our little dive boat scooted
under the stern of the Disney cruise ship with its huge cartoon character
figures hanging under the rail. I think Goofy was bigger than our boat.
In almost an hour under water we saw a scorpion fish, a huge spiny
lobster, a baby green turtle, a baracuda almost as long as I am who
guarded the bottom of the boat ladder for quite a while, a black
sea cucumber, trumpetfish and many other wonders.

On the other side of the Atlantic and the North Sea, the Hotel Hafen
Hamburg has a nautical theme. Everywhere you look are pictures and
artifacts from ships. I ate dinner one night in the Port restaurant
under a huge wooden ship’s steering wheel. The food was tasty,
interesting, and well prepared.

Breakfast in the Port restaurant was also very good.
There were many choices of sausages, cheeses, liverwursts, jams,
honeys, breads, and yogurts for breakfast. I had no idea what the
differences were between some of the preserved meats. My one complaint
was very little fruit was available and what was there was poor.
Californians are picky about their produce.

I used the nearby subway to get from the hotel to Sun. Figuring out the
ticket machine was tricky because the directions were only in German.
I was in meetings most of my time in Hamburg but I saw some of the city
by night with my friends who were in town from Stockholm. Even in the
drizzle of a cool evening, it was delightful watching the boats zipping
up and down the Elba river. Before dinner, we walked around the
waterfront and watched the ferries dock sideways.

We have received 52 SEED applications so far for the Prague, Dublin, Hamburg,
and Grenoble term. All are due tonight at midnight, California time (in about
14 hours). The applications so far are from:

• Czech Republic: 20 [ 38% ]
• France: 7 [ 13% ]
• Germany: 15 [ 29% ]
• Ireland: 10 [ 19% ]

Tanya Jankot and I are responding to lots of last minute questions. We are
reviewing the applications and making corrections, such as:

• Looking up the organizational affiliation for those who indicated “Don’t Know”
• Getting back to people who did not fill in their annual performance ratings or
  level of recommendation

• Fixing entries where someone who was not the applicant’s manager checked
  the box indicating that they were

As usual, there is confusion about seniority levels. That is, if someone tells
us that their title is “Engineering Manager” with job grade “D-DS-M1Y” it is
not clear if they are a low level supervisor or almost an executive. This
SEED term has no requirement for seniority. However, we will need to be able
to determine equivalent seniority because potential mentors usually ask.
Mentors want to know
where the person is in their professional development because some of them feel
more of a calling for beginning staff while others only want to partner
someone who is almost an executive.

I have also started to fill in my

Visa application to go to Russia in January for the next SEED term.
There are 41 sections, among other responses they require:

• List all countries you have visited in the last ten years and indicate
  the year of visit

• List all professional, civil and charity organizations which you are
  (were) a member of, or contribute (contributed) to, or work (worked) with

• List all educational institutions you ever attended, except high schools
• Do you have any specialized skills, training or experience related to fire-arms and explosives or to nuclear, biological or chemical activities? If «Yes», please explain

This is going to take a while to fill in…

Tanya Jankot and I have arrived home safely to the Bay Area
from our trips to Dublin, Grenoble, Prague, and Hamburg.
I was delighted and inspired to meet so many very cabable Engineering
staff. We are honored that so many of them have chosen to apply
to SEED.

SEED is open to receive applications through midnight California
time Monday, 14 November (which is tomorrow for me). If someone needs
more time to prepare their material, they should submit their web
application form with as much information as
they have by the 14 November deadline. They will have until
18 November to send in a revision. All material from applicants,
managers, and recommenders is due 18 November. We will select
and announce the 25 SEED participants from Dublin, Grenoble,
Prague, and Hamburg on 22 November.

36 Applications so far:

• Czech Republic: 14 [ 39% ]
• France: 7 [ 19% ]
• Germany: 8 [ 22% ]
• Ireland: 7 [ 19% ]

We are receiving a wide range of applicants: development Engineers,
managers, program managers, and quality Engineers. Most are from
Software but there are a few from Sun’s Scalable Systems Group. I
hope some of the Service and Sales Engineers will also apply.

As usual, there is also a wide range of location of origin. Origin
information is interesting
because it gives us one indication of an applicant’s breadth of cultural
experience. The majority of applicants come from the 4 countries where
the sites are located but there are also applicants who started from
Bosnia, Australia, Slovak Republic, Romania, Russia, USA, and India.

Unusually, very few women have applied so far to this SEED term.
While we hope to see more, we expected a lower number of female applicants
because of the much lower number of women in Computer Science in 3 of
the 4 target countries. According to a U.C. San Diego study* of 21 countries
last August, the factor by which men are overrepresented in Computer Science
relative to their representation in the other fields is:

• 1. Turkey 1.79
• 2. Ireland 1.84
• 5. United States 2.1
• 13. France 4.57
• 19. Germany 5.58
• 21. Czech Republic 6.42

* “University diplomas in computer science are overwhelmingly
earned by males, according to a new study of 21 nations, but
significant country-to-country differences in the gender gap
imply that much more than genetics is at work.”

“Why Aren’t More Girls ‘Geeks’?”,
August 15, 2005 – University of California San Diego,
U.C. NewsWire