Category Archives: News & Reviews

Publication

I hope you will want to read “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009“, the newest Sun Laboratories Technical Report by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot, and Helen Gracon, published this morning. You can see the spotlight announcement on Sun Labs’ public home page at http://research.sun.com. The Report number is TR-2009-185.

Announcement
August 28, 2009- Sun Microsystems has benefited from a long-term successful culture of mentoring, especially in its worldwide engineering divisions. About 7,300 mentoring pairs have participated in one of Sun’s formal mentoring programs since 1996. Sun has developed several internal formal worldwide mentoring programs, three of which are still offered. To create this report, the authors analyzed Sun’s 1996-2009 mentoring program data, plus Sunwide data, plus information from a Gartner report on Sun mentoring which focused on the ROI of Sun’s mentoring programs.

Mentoring has paid off for Sun in increased productivity, efficiency, and greater satisfaction among participants. This report presents what Sun did and how Sun did it to allow others to take advantage of the company’s extensive and successful experience with this remarkably effective and versatile business method. So far as is known, this report is unique: no other company has published a long-term detailed analysis about its corporate mentoring program.

Abstract
This paper provides a summary of mentoring information, best practices, metrics, and recommendations developed during 1996-2009 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun provides network computing infrastructure solutions that include computer systems, software, storage and services. The company has a strong corporate culture that values and promotes mentoring. Sun has offered several internally-developed formal mentoring programs, including:

• SEED (Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development) Katy Dickinson has been SEED’s Director since 2001
• Mentoring@Sun, managed by Helen Gracon since 1996
• New Sun Vice Presidents, managed by Helen Gracon since 2004

Mentoring increases effectiveness and efficiency to achieve business results by doing real work, real time. Developing a corporate culture of mentoring is a good way to establish a network of communication across organizational silos, promote a wide variety of talents, and broaden the diversity of ideas and innovation available to the company. The ROI on Sun mentoring has been calculated to be 1,000% or greater.

Mentoring is near the top of most lists of tools that are effective at promoting professional development and advancement in industry. As a business method, mentoring works well generally and also is particularly valuable to women and minorities. These benefits are of special interest to engineering companies and are in addition to more objective productivity measures of mentoring success such as increased performance ratings, higher retention, and more promotions. SEED has been sponsored since 2001 by Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Sun’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development.

The home page for SEED is http://research.sun.com/SEED.

Originally published: 28 August 2009
Key Links Updated, photo added: 8 April 2016 and 13 June 2020

Lately I have spent most of my time writing, revising, and editing the soon-to-be-published 107-page-long Sun Labs Technical Report titled “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009“. Tanya Jankot, Helen Gracon, and I pooled our knowledge about all of Sun’s mentoring programs and the 7,300 mentoring pairs with whom we have worked. Thanks to the many who helped in collecting the information and reviewing the document.

Sample SEED Data

• 93% of mentees who sent in quarterly reports thought meetings with their mentor were worthwhile.
• SEED mentees received 1-Superior performance ratings at an average
  annual rate of 40%, twice that of the general Sun employee population.
• SEED mentees were promoted at an average annual rate of 33%, more than twice that of the general Sun employee population rate.
• Promotions fell by 38% during the 2007-2009 Economic Bust period.
• Men and women mentees report the same program satisfaction (90% average), regardless of their mentor’s gender.
• SEED (and Mentoring@Sun) mentoring pairs who work at a distance have for many years reported the same satisfaction level as those working locally; however, mentors and mentees both report that working at a distance is more time consuming.

Abstract

This paper provides a summary of mentoring information, best practices, metrics, and recommendations developed during 1996- 2009 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun provides network computing infrastructure solutions that include computer systems, software, storage and services. The company has a strong corporate culture that values and promotes mentoring. Sun has offered several internally-developed formal mentoring
programs, including:

• SEED (Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development),
  Katy Dickinson has been SEED’s Director since 2001
• Mentoring@Sun, managed by Helen Gracon since 1996
• New Sun Vice Presidents, managed by Helen Gracon since 2004

Mentoring increases effectiveness and efficiency to achieve business results by doing real work, real time. Developing a corporate culture of mentoring is a good way to establish a network of communication across organizational silos, promote a wide variety of talents,
and broaden the diversity of ideas and innovation available to the company. The ROI on Sun mentoring has been calculated to be 1,000% or greater.

Mentoring is near the top of most lists of tools that are effective at promoting professional development and advancement in industry. As a business method, mentoring works well generally and also is particularly valuable to women and minorities. These benefits are of special interest to engineering companies and are in addition to more objective productivity measures of mentoring success such as increased performance ratings, higher retention, and more promotions. SEED has been sponsored since 2001 by Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Sun’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development.

Table of Contents

The report includes the following sections, some of which were published in earlier drafts in Katysblog:

1. Introduction
2. Summary of Sun’s Mentoring Programs
3. Mentoring in Engineering and Computer Science
4. Formal vs. Informal Mentoring
5. Internal or External Mentoring Program?
6. Mentor Selection Systems
7. Picking Your Mentor, Picking Your Mentee
8. Best Practices for Mentors
9. Mentoring Program Web Tools and Process
10. Mentoring in Good Times and Bad
11. Sun Mentoring: 1996 to 2009 – Conclusions

These sections are followed by 33 pages of appendices, including an extensive set of metrics charts on selection rates, executive participation, demographics, satisfaction, performance, promotions, attrition, meeting length and frequency, etc.

Originally published: 14 August 2009
Key Links Updated, photo added: 8 April 2016 and 13 June 2020