Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

Starting our second week of SEED applications, we now have 23 Established Staff applicants
and 12 Recent Hire applications. Applications are due 17 June. The announcement to Sun’s
managers of interns just went out this morning so we may get more Recent Hire applications
soon. I have gotten lots of email with questions. I try not to just send the traditional
RTFM response to the large number who ask questions already answered at length
by the FAQ or the application form. I also end up writing quite a few emails to those
who apply anyway even though they are not eligible. I try to make these as prompt and respectful
as possible – those folks may be potential applicants in future years. We usually have over
double the number of applicants than we can accept – that is, we don’t have to lower standards
to make a quota.

One of the challenges of running this program is managing the selection criteria. Since we
started in 2001, we have run two Sun Sigma (6 Sigma) projects associated with SEED, including
one mostly on selection criteria. We have the following caveat emptor in the Selection Criteria section of SEED’s “Participant Selection Process”-

The goal is not perfection but improvement: the best we can do right now. We don’t know what the absolute success factors are because each person and their experience are different. The program staff regularly gather data on program participants to understand success factors better.

One area we have struggled with from the beginning is getting the right balance between the
criteria for the two SEED groups. All SEED participants have to meet the four basic
requirements:

• All Participants are in Engineering.
• Only regular Sun employees may participate.
• Superior performance ratings are preferred.
• Manager support is required.

In addition to these basics, the Established Staff group has both a minimum service
requirement (2 years) and a minimum seniority requirement (Principal grade level). The
Recent Hire group has a maximum service requirement (2 years) and no seniority requirement.
For the Recent Hires, we have an executive Selection Committee that reviews SEED application materials for the following. Applicants are not expected to excel in all areas or meet all criteria.

• Academic Performance
• Demonstrated Leadership
• Demonstrated Technical Excellence
• Enthusiasm shown in the Program Application
• Demonstrated Creative Ability (inc. Patents)
• Work History
• Ability to Communicate
• Publications

Once someone has been a regular employee long enough to have gotten an annual performance
review, selection is somewhat easier because their management has already given a formal
evaluation. We can use the manager’s rating as a baseline for discussion.
These selection criteria are based on an extensive demographic study we did in one of our Sigma
projects plus tweaking we have done over the years to try to get the best mix. We want
our criteria to be fair and reasonable and to identify a group of Engineering staff who will
grow and support SEED’s priorities:

1. Value, satisfaction, and retention
2. Build Sun’s Engineering community
3. Work to balance the diversity of Participants (geographic, demographic, & professional)

I know we are doing something right because we usually get 90% or higher satisfaction
ratings on quarterly reports. I don’t know which is more inspiring – the passion of the
SEED participants to learn and improve or the passion of the SEED executive mentors to help
people behind them on the career path.

We have matched 24 of the 26 participants in the Engineering & Research Institute,
Beijing SEED pilot term that started officially this week. Two of the mentoring
partnerships were just confirmed this morning. We started the matching process on
18 May so this is going very quickly indeed. The two remaining participants are in
active conversations with potential mentors so I have good hope of their being matched
very soon. As of Wednesday, 10 of the pairs had already gone through their facilitated
partnership training and the others were in the scheduling process for training.

Over 70% of the matched Mentors so far this term are executives (Directors,
Distinguished Engineers, or Vice Presidents) which is slightly lower seniority than
SEED’s average but is good enough. The mentee participants are all working in Beijing
but the Mentors are all over: here in
the California Bay Area USA, Amersfoort Netherlands, New Jersey USA, Toronto Canada,
Colorado USA, Virginia USA, Beijing China, and Blackwater Camberley UK. The conversations
of this group are going to be impressively international.

There are 18 applications so far for the two world-wide 2005-2006 SEED terms which start
in September: 5 for the Recent Hires group and 13 for the Established Staff group.
Applications are due 17 June. Some of the applicants
have very distinguished backgrounds. They are from all over geographically, professionally,
and demographically. As usual, women and non-US staff are asking to take advantage of
the SEED program at a consistently higher rate than their representation in Engineering
overall. This has been the pattern since we started SEED in 2001.

I presented on the SEED program at the Grace Hopper Conference of Women in Computing
(Chicago IL USA, October 2004). It was interesting to learn about mentoring programs
at other high tech
companies. Sun does seem to be at the high metrics-driven institutionalized end of
the scale: most of the other programs discussed seemed less structured and did not
collect much data on success or satisfaction.

On 1 June, CTO Greg Papadopoulos opened the application period for
two terms of Sun’s SEED – Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development
– Engineering mentoring program. The application period ends on 17
June. I get a fair number of questions from outside of Sun about how
to run a mentoring program so it is my hope that this topic will be
of general interest.

About SEED: program participants are expected to rise to the top of
Sun Engineering’s individual contributor or management ranks. The
current Recent Hire and Established Staff terms will be the 11th and
12th times we have run the SEED program since it started in 2001. There
have already been over SEED 315 Participants and over 190 Mentors
World-wide. External-to-Sun information about SEED is available from
several sources,including Sun’s Student Zone – Best of the Best page:

http://www.sun.com/corp_emp/zone/special.html
and the Sun home page article about SEED from last year:

http://research.sun.com/spotlight/2004-02-18.SEED.html
There have also been a number of press articles and SEED was a featured
best practice in the 2003 book Bit by Bit:Catalyst’s Guide To
Advancing Women In High Tech Companies.

Tanya Jankot has programmed the web-based application form so that it
displays and tallies itself on SEED’s passworded web site. So far, we
have 2 Recent Hire applicants (one in Shanghai and the other in Beijing)
and 8 Established Staff applicants (from Menlo Park CA USA, Beijing,
Broomfield CO USA, and Burlington MA USA). I am getting several queries
an hour from potential applicants and manager, mostly asking for selection
criteria clarifications.

We are still in the announcement stage for these terms. Greg’s email is
still being distributed around Sun – I have gotten copies back from five
or ten sources since Monday. I will be on a conference call next Tuesday
night for Sun staff in the Asia Pacific area who may be interested.

After running a special term for the Bangalore,India staff and the Beijing,
China staff earlier this year, it will be interesting to see what differences
there are in a world-wide Engineering open enrollment term.