Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

Yesterday, we held the first of two SEED program participant selection
meetings. This one was for the Established Staff: those who have been
with Sun Engineering for over 2 years and are at a high seniority level.
Tomorrow, we pick from the Recent Hire applicants.

We selected 37 out of 121 Established Staff applicants. Ten of them had
perfect annual performance records: three Superior or “1” ratings for the
last three years. This is an impressive group.

Location of Participants:

• 4 Asia, 11%
  
  from India and Singapore

• 10 Europe & Middle East, 27%
  
  from Czech Republic, France,Germany, Israel, Sweden, The Netherlands,
  and the UK

• 23 USA, 62%
  
  from California, Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
  New York, Ohio, and Texas

Gender of Participants:

• 10 Female, 27%
• 27 Male, 73%

After we pick the Recent Hire group, both groups have until mid-July to send us their
Mentor Wish Lists and then we start looking for executives mentors for each.

We received 233 SEED Engineering mentoring program applications. More than half from
outside of the USA. Tanya Jankot and I are busy sorting and checking and asking for
clarifications. We have been in touch
with HR in China, India, Singapore, the UK, and Germany working through the nuances of
international title equivalencies and seniority levels. Corporate HR is checking applicant
data now before we open up the applications for review by the executive Selection Committee.

The deadline for resumes, recommendations, and additional submissions from applicants
is this Friday, 24 June. We select and announce the 60 participants next week. The
Mentor Wish Lists from the participants are due 13 July. Then, the mentor matching begins.

I sent summary emails today to SEED’s executive hosts in the countries with the largest
applicant pools outside of the US: 56 from India, 15 from China, 26 from Russia, and 10
from the Czech Republic. I hope that they will be able to help the applicants get all of
their stuff in. Tanya says we have 41 applications with all information submitted,
up from 22 this morning. She and I are getting dozens of emails and phone calls each
asking for information, advice, and reassurance.

Only 5 people contacted me asking to submit an application after the deadline. Only one was
nasty when I said no.

This is the last application day for the 2005-2006 SEED Engineering mentoring program.
I am very pleased to see that so far we have 106 Recent Hire applicants and 113
Established Staff applicants. Tanya Jankot and I are sorting through them,
getting back to applicants with questions and answering lots of questions
by email and phone.

Some managers and HR folks get angry with us (and tell us their views at length) because
the program is exclusive, which to them seems to mean “unfair”. Yet, we are very
clear in our presentations and on our web pages that SEED participants are expected to
rise to the top of Sun Engineering’s individual contributor or management ranks. That is,
we are a small program looking to benefit the most talented and promotable and able
staff in Engineering. Presumably that is why they want their staff to join. Of course
this is an exclusive group! Sun Engineering is not
Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon
where “all of the children are above average”.

These may be the first SEED terms in which the US-based staff are fewer than the
international staff. So far, we have applicants from:

Established Staff

• 3 China
• 5 Czech Republic
• 5 France
• 3 Germany
• 17 India
• 1 Israel
• 2 Singapore
• 1 Sweden
• 1 The Netherlands
• 3 UK
• 71 USA

Recent Hires

• 12 China
• 4 Czech Republic
• 3 Germany
• 41 India
• 26 Russia
• 28 USA

The SEED program is trying to change the leadership of Sun Engineering to make it even better.
This being so, one of our guides is Niccolo Machiavelli who wrote in The Prince in 1513:

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

Thus, it happens that wheneever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly…

Tomorrow is the last day for SEED applications for the 2005-2006 terms.
Tanya and I are mostly helping people update the applications they already
sent in to which they now want to make changes, and still answering basic
eligibility questions. We are also sorting out seniority levelling questions –
whether this title for a technical service architect is equivalent in seniority
to that title for a senior software developer. I was on a Q&A conference call to
Bangalore late Tuesday night and I hope that some of those folks will apply.

So far, we have 69 Recent Hire applicants:

• China: 12
• Czech Republic: 2
• Germany: 2
• India: 23
• Russia: 11
• United States: 19

And we have 64 Established Staff applicants:

• China: 2
• Czech Republic: 2
• France: 2
• Germany: 2
• India: 6
• Israel: 1
• Singapore: 1
• The Netherlands: 1
• UK: 3
• United States: 43

I am answering SEED questions by email while eating breakfast, feeding the dogs,
changing the bird’s water, doing laundry, answering a frantic phone call from my son
who forgot-Zach’s-birthday-present-and-the-party-is-this-afternoon-Mom!,
and the usual morning stuff.

When I was out feeding the dogs and letting them run around the yard, I saw that
one of our huge prickley pear cactus had dropped a branch right on top of my blooming
alstromeira lillies. Sigh.

“The minute we stop maintaining our gardens, the ravages of wind, snow, ice, droughts, floods, weeds, pests, and diseases transform them into something we never imagined. Basically, there’s no such thing as a “natural” garden, even one that consists entirely of native species. Much as we might like to deny it, nature abhors the garden.”

Peter Del Tredici, 2001
“Pacific Horticulture” July-Sep 2001 issue

5 days to go on our 2005-2006 mentoring terms application period.
There have been 32 recent hire applications and 33 established
staff applications for SEED’s 11th and 12th terms. This is our first
term using a single application form for both groups. Tanya Jankot
(SEED’s Applications Engineer) and I hope the new way it is less
confusing for the applicants. Tanya fixed a bug in the date sorting which was
putting some of the new hires into the established staff area so we
think we have a good count now.

The recent hires category has no seniority or service requirements,
only a excellence criteria. The established staff category has
seniority, service, and excellence criteria. We have only gotten one
formal request so far for someone hired in August 2003 to be considered
a recent hire rather than established staff (for which the person did
not have the seniority). We approved the request. Only 6 applicants have
been disqualified so far for being too junior for established staff at
the same time as having been at Sun too long to be considered a recent hire.

It is a pleasure to see at least ten familiar names among the managers
recommending their staff for participation. Several managers have more than
one of their staff among the SEED applicants. One is a Distinguished Engineer
who has served twice as a Mentor and once as a Participant reappearing as a
recommending manager for an applicant. Another is a Mentor in
the Bangalore pilot term which ends this month. In addition, there are 22 SEED
participants now on the Potential Mentors lists and several of them have already
served more than once as mentors. I see these patterns of repeated program contact
in several roles as indications that SEED is supporting its priority to “Build
Sun’s Engineering community by making and strengthening connections between its
members and with the rest of Sun”.

There has been lots of internal Sun email this morning about blogs.
The 13 June San Francisco Chronicle article

“Writing the codes on blogs Companies figure out what’s OK, what’s not in
online realm” apparently started the discussion. It is fun to see people
I know written about. I am particularly pleased to see SEED participants like
Rich Burridge quoted. I enjoy reading Rich’s blog, especially when he mentions
the SEED program:
“Sun Tours” (1 Oct 2004).

10 days to go to the Engineering mentoring program application deadline of 17 June.
Last night I was on a conference call
with lots of Sun people from Asia Pacific (Singapore, Australia, Korea…) to give a SEED
program overview and answer questions. I think it went well. As usual, the HR folks wanted
exceptions to the service and seniority criteria, and deadline extensions. As usual, I
explained (in the words of the FAQ):

Suggestions for SEED program change are very welcome and should go to Katy Dickinson.
Please review the “Mentor Selection Process” and “Participant Selection Process” before
making detailed or large scale change suggestions. The SEED program staff uses
sigma methods to refine and improve
itself from term to term. As the program has evolved over the last few years, there have
been several
sigma projects associated with it.
The application and selection processes in particular are often under discussion and
have been improved and better targeted many times already since the program started in
2001. However, these process and criteria changes must take place between application
periods so as to be fair to all current applicants.

There have been 17 Recent Hire and 29 Established Staff applications so far. Applicants
come from the Bay Area CA USA (20), Shanghai China (1), Boston area MA USA (3),
Beijing China (7), Guangzhou China (1), Bangalore India (5), Los Angeles CA USA (1),
Broomfield CO USA (2), Herzelia Israel (1), Dallas TX USA (1), Columbia MD USA (1),
and Camberley UK (2). Even after 5 years of creating and managing this program, I find
making personal connections between superb contributors who work in such far flung
places very exciting.

We had our monthly SEED world-wide phone-in meeting this morning featuring two women who
both started in the USA but one was working in China and the other England when they
were mentoring partners. As is common, they have continued their communication far
beyond the actual SEED term. It is always fascinating to hear how much the SEED pairs
get out of their conversations and how they solve the always-challenging barriers of
time, culture, and distance. One discussion topic this morning was how important it was
to the mentee that she have a female mentor.

SEED Mentor Gender Patterns was one of the slides I presented at the October 2004
Hopper conference:

• Women Participants are more likely to ask for women Mentors.
  • 19% Women Mentors were requested
  • Women Participants requested 32% women potential Mentors while male Participants requested 14% women potential Mentors.
• Women Mentors are more likely to accept women Participants as mentees.
  
  Half of the women Mentors chose to mentor other women.
  • 16% Women Mentors were matched
  • 51% Women Mentors accepted women Participants while 20% men Mentors accepted women Participants.
• Gender is one of many considerations.
  Others include: availability when asked, accomplishments, experience, personality, capabilities or skills, common intellectual or professional interests, personal compatibility and commonality, & physical or time zone proximity.