KatysBlog

Since the 9 June deadline, Tanya Jankot and I have worked with Sun’s Human
Resources records to review the 169 SEED applications which were submitted on
time. 121 of the 169 were complete and verified by HR. Yesterday, I passed the
27 eligible Recent Hire (RH) applications to the 2008-2009 executive Selection Committee
for review. The Recent Hire and Established Staff selections will
be made and announced on 18 June.

There is a wide seniority range among the RH applicants: from Sun
Grade 5 (Member of the Technical Staff 2) through Grade 13 (Director). This term,
SEED has modified is scope and welcomed acquired staff as RH
candidates within 9 months of their acquisition date.

The job of the RH Selection Committee is to sort the applications assigned to
each of them into L-Low, M-Medium, or H-High buckets. Giving someone a H-High
rating means that in the Selection Committee member’s opinion, that person has
a good potential over time to rise to the top of Sun Engineering’s individual
contributor or management ranks.

Why not accept them all? Because we have unfortunately found in prior
terms that just meeting the basic SEED criteria does not mean an
applicant can be expected to rise to the top of Sun Engineering’s
individual contributor or management ranks. If I am going to ask
senior or executive Sun staff to accept a SEED mentee and spend a year
coaching them, the mentee should be a rising star with potential for
notable success in Sun Engineering.

Each SEED application is read independently
by at least two Selection Committee members. Each member ends up reading about
the same number of applications. The discussions are often around differences
of interpretation (usually for an Applicant rated High by one and Low by
another) and around how many Medium/Mediums to include to achieve an
appropriate level of diversity among the Participants. Diversity is considered
in terms of demographics, geographic work location, and professional area
within Engineering (software, microelectronics, labs, storage, etc.).
So long as they have one or more Medium/Medium (or higher) ranked Applicants,
every Sun division gets at least one Applicant accepted.

After the selections are announced on 18 June, I will not tell RH applicants what
rating they got (H, M, or L). However, I will tell their managers their staff member’s rating if the manager calls to talk about it. I will not tell anyone
who on the Selection Committee gave which rating. Some terms, 30 or more managers call to get specific information on the case of their staff members. I will not
refer any managers to the Selection Committee.

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

SEED’s 2008-2009 Engineering mentoring program application web pages are now
disabled. Today, Tanya and I reviewed and cleaned things up before
passing a summary to Human Resources for information verification. HR will check
dates of hire, titles, annual performance ratings, etc. I also declined
many email requests from applicants and managers wanting to submit just one more
document after the deadline. Cleaning up the application records takes time
and can be complex: sometimes valid documents are misfiled (for example, by managers
or executives who mis-type the identification number of the applicant they want
to recommend), and sometimes parts of the forms (often the job title) are left
blank, so we have to look up the information.

SEED received 169 applications by yesterday’s deadline, of which 127
were known to be complete this morning. 4 more were completed today as a
result of our cleanup. (I expect to see more completions as we continue to
sort out document confusions.) This morning’s preliminary total includes:

• Recent Hires: 45 applications, 29 complete
• Established Staff: 124 applications, 98 complete

Applicants were based in Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, P.R. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and
the USA. SEED’s selection committees meet on 18 June and announcements will be made
immediately after.

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/

Today at midnight (in just over an hour) is the deadline for all 2008-2009 SEED
application materials. I am still getting a steady flow of emails from applicants,
managers, and recommenders with final submissions. I have been surprised to get several
dozen new applications today – usually, the last day of the 20-day-long application
period is dedicated to revisions and additional recommendations (polishing the apples
rather than planting new trees). I received the most recent new application just over
an hour ago.

The SEED mentoring program is accepting applications from Sun Engineering
staff worldwide for its Recent Hire and Established Staff mentoring terms which
will start in September 2008. (The next PreSEED term does not start until
January 2009.) To date, we have received 169 SEED applications, 122 of which
are complete. This total includes:

• Recent Hires: 45 applications, 28 complete
• Established Staff: 124 applications, 94 complete

More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/