Tag Archives: Sun Microsystems

January 25, 2010 · 2:04 am

Famous Women in Computer Science (revised)

An updated and expanded web resource based on this was published on 8 March 2012 (International Women’s Day): “Famous Women in Computer Science”.

My original Famous Women in Computer Science list was getting messy with all of the late additions, so I put it into surname alphabetical order and am re-posting it here. This list started in 19 November 2009 but with so many additions in email and comments, it keeps growing.

One purpose of this list is to encourage readers to go to awards web sites (like that of the RAISE Project), think about women who should be considered, and then organize a nomination. Awards often go begging for lack of good nominations and a great woman is often overlooked because no one mentioned her name or took the time to build her case. Increased focus is needed on awards going to great technical women at every stage in their careers.

Read more about The Value of Awards in my 1 October 2009 blog entry
about our Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC09) panel by that name.

The following list is uneven and I am sure there are many more who should be added but here is what I have so far. Additions and edits are very welcome.

Criteria for inclusion:

  • Must be a woman working in Computer Science with a remarkable history both of success and of public acknowledgment beyond her home organization.
  • Pioneers and originators get extra credit and may have much-delayed public acknowledgment.
  • Extra credit for being a CTO, CEO, President, or founder of a technical company.

Famous Women in Computer Science

  • Frances E. Allen, 1st female IBM Fellow, 1st female recipient of ACM’s A. M. Turing Award 2006, WITI Hall of Fame 1997, IEEE Fellow 1991, ACM Fellow 1994
  • Betsy Ancker-Johnson, 1st observation of microwave emission without the presence of an external field (1967), Fellow American Physical Society, Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow Society of Automotive Engineers, IEEE Fellow, Member National Academy of Engineering
  • Carol Bartz, President and CEO of Yahoo! (starting in 2009), previously
    Chairman, President, and CEO at Autodesk (1992-2009), WITI Hall of Fame 1997
  • Lenore Blum, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Anita Borg, founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT), which became the Anita Borg Institute, EFF Pioneer Award 1995, WITI Hall of Fame 1998, ACM Fellow 1996
  • Cynthia Breazeal, pioneer of social robotics at MIT Media Lab, US Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigators Award
  • Safra A. Catz, President Oracle Corporation since 2004, CFO Oracle since 2005, Member Oracle Board since 2001
  • Lynn Conway, Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, invention of generalised dynamic instruction handling, IEEE Fellow 1985, Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award 1990
  • Susan Dumais, leadership in bridging the fields of information retrieval and human computer interaction, ACM Fellow 2006, ACM SIGIR Salton Award 2009-lifetime achievement in IR
  • Carly Fiorina, CEO Hewlett-Packard 1999-2005
  • Adele Goldberg, co-developer of Smalltalk at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, ACM President 1984, ACM Fellow 1994
  • Adele Goldstine, authored the Manual for the ENIAC in 1946
  • Shafi Goldwasser, RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and of computer science and applied mathematics at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award 1996
  • Diane Greene, VMWare co-founder and CEO (1998-2008)
  • Irene Greif, IBM Fellow, 1st woman to earn a PhD in computer science at MIT, MIT Professor of electrical engineering and computer science, ACM Fellow, Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, WITI Hall of Fame 2000
  • Helen Greiner, 1990-2008 Co-founder, Board Chair of iRobot, Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Innovation award winner 2008, WITI Hall of Fame 2007
  • Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK, 2008 ACM President, 2009 Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), 2009 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
  • Erna Schneider Hoover, as a researcher at Bell Laboratories, created a computerized switching system for telephone call traffic and earned one of the 1st software patents ever issued (1971), 1st first female supervisor of a technical department at Bell Labs
  • Grace Murray Hopper, developed the 1st compiler for a computer programming language, US Navy Rear Admiral, in 1973 became the 1st person from the USA and the 1st woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society, IEEE Fellow 1962 (1st woman awarded), Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award 1964
  • Mary Jane Irwin, Evan Pugh Professorship Pennsylvania State University, ACM Distinguished Service Award, IEEE Fellow 1995, ACM Fellow 1996, National Academy of Engineering member 2003, 2005 ACM Distinguished Service Award, 2006 Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award, 2007 Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award, American Academy of Arts and Sciences member 2009
  • Leah Jamieson, Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award – Social Impact 2007, IEEE Fellow 1993, Purdue University Dean of Engineering, IEEE President 2007
  • Mary Lou Jepsen, Founding Chief Technology Officer of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pixel Qi, WITI Hall of Fame 2008
  • Katherine Johnson, research mathematician and scientist who worked at NASA’s Langley Research Center 1953 to 1986, calculated the trajectory of the early space launches
  • Karen Spärck Jones, pioneer of the science behind information retrieval, ACM SIGIR Salton Award 1988, BCS Lovelace Medal 2007, the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award 2007
  • Augusta Ada King (Countess of Lovelace), 1843 wrote a description of Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is credited with being the 1st computer programmer.
  • Maria Klawe, 5th president of Harvey Mudd College (1st woman in that role), previously Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, 2002 ACM President, ACM Fellow 1996
  • Sandra Kurtzig, founder and CEO of ASK computers (1972-1991)
  • Hedy Lamarr, co-invention of spread-spectrum broadcast communications technologies 1940, EFF Special Pioneer Award 1997
  • Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer, Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Social Impact award winner 2008, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Distinguished Engineer Association for Computing Machinery
  • Barbara H. Liskov, Ford Professor of Engineering in the MIT School of Engineering’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award 1996, IEEE John von Neumann Medal 2004, 2nd woman to win ACM’s A. M. Turing Award 2008, 1st US woman to be awarded a PhD from a computer science department in 1968, ACM Fellow 1996
  • Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jennings, and Fran Bilas, original programmers of the ENIAC starting in 1946, WITI Hall of Fame 1997
  • Evi Nemeth, Associate Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Co-author of the best-selling UNIX System Administration Handbook (Prentice Hall, 1995)
  • Ellen Ochoa, Dr. Ochoa has logged over 978 hours in space, earning the US Distinguished Service Medal, Exceptional Service Medal, Outstanding Leadership Medal, and four NASA Space Flight Medals. 1st Hispanic woman in space. She designed optical systems for Sandia National Laboratory and at NASA’s Ames Research Center developed computer systems designed for aeronautical expeditions. Deputy Director of the Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX)
  • Radia Perlman, the ‘Mother of the Internet’, 1st Sun Microsystems female Fellow, 1st Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Innovation award winner 2005, IEEE Fellow 2008
  • Rosalind W. Picard, credited with starting the entire field of Affective Computing, MIT Director of Affective Computing Research, IEEE Fellow 2005
  • Jean E. Sammet, IBM computer languages FORMAC and COBOL, 1st woman ACM President 1974, ACM Fellow 1994
  • Lucy Sanders, CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, Bell Labs Fellow Award (1996), WITI Hall of Fame (2007)
  • Barbara Simons, 1st woman to receive the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering of U.C. Berkeley 2005, ACM Fellow 1993, EFF Pioneer Award 1998, ACM President 1998
  • Eva Tardos, Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Cornell University, ACM Fellow 1998
  • Janie Tsao Co-Founder of Linksys (1988-2003), 1st Anita Borg Institute Woman of Vision – Leadership award winner 2005
  • Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox Chief Technology Officer, IEEE Fellow 2005
  • Manuela Veloso, Portuguese Computer Scientist and Roboticist, Herbert A. Simon Professor, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, President of the International RoboCup Federation. Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, National Science Foundation CAREER award (1995), CMU Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research (1997)
  • Padmasree Warrior, Cisco Chief Technology Officer, former Motorola Chief Technology Officer (Semiconductor Products), Motorola’s 1st female executive, Distinguished Alumni Award from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi 2004, WITI Hall of Fame 2007
  • Meg Whitman, CEO eBay 1998-2008
  • Jeanette Wing, President’s Professor of Computer Science (former CS Department Head), Carnegie Mellon University, Assistant Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, National Science Foundation, IEEE Fellow 2003, ACM Fellow 1998
  • Beatrice Helen Worsley, Canada’s Female Computer Pioneer, a witness to several great moments in computing history, one of the first women to earn a doctorate in Computer Science in 1951

References

Blog entry by Katy Dickinson

3 Comments

Filed under Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, News & Reviews

Tagged as , ,

January 15, 2010 · 11:45 pm

New Wikipedia Entry: Danny Cohen

Danny Cohen and I have been discussing and editing his new Wikipedia biography since before Christmas.

Danny is a Sun Distinguished Engineer who works down the hall from me in Menlo Park, California. Danny also worked on the ARPANet, the forerunner to the Internet. He was the first to run a visual flight simulator across the ARPANet after pioneering visual real time interactive flight simulation on general purpose computers, and also pioneering real time radar simulation. Later, Danny also led projects on real time interactive applications over the ARPAnet and the Internet, such as packet-voice (aka Voice over Internet Protocol) and packet-video.

Danny is best known for his 1980 paper “On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace” which coined the terms “Big Endians” and “Little Endians”. There is even a Wikipedia article on Endianness. Danny still considers himself a student of Ivan Sutherland.

Tonight, my husband John and I got Danny’s entry posted. We are still adding references and links and I have promised Danny that I will post a better photo. Check it out:

Danny Cohen (engineer).

This is my second original Wikipedia entry. My first was about early NASA mathematician and Computer  Katherine Johnson

Some pictures of Danny and me:

Our subway map project

Danny Cohen, Katy Dickinson, Sun Labs Metro Maps<br /> photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

 At Dr. Edward Tufte’s class

Katy Dickinson and Danny Cohen at Edward Tufte class<br /> photo: copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

Images Copyright 2008-2009 Katy Dickinson

1 Comment

Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as ,

January 13, 2010 · 5:19 pm

Planning Poker and SEED (Estimating and Rating Tools)

I went to a breakfast meeting of the PM PM SIG (Project Management Special Interest Group) today to hear Kevin Thompson of cPrime talk about “Wideband Delphi (Agile) Estimation for Project Managers”. It turned out to be a fun talk about an easy-to-use estimating tool called Planning Poker by Mountain Goat Software. I was surprised by the similarities between the Planning Poker estimation method and the participant selection method we have used for many years for Sun’s SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program.

Planning Poker

Planning Poker is based on the Delphi estimation method pioneered by the Rand Corporation in the 1940s, then refined by Barry Boehm in the 1970s.

I volunteered to participate in the demonstration during this morning’s meeting. I pretended to be an Expert on Chickens. I was quizzed by a team of three estimators who had to decide how many chickens would be needed to feed dinner to twenty people. Here is how we used the Planning Poker estimation cards:

  1. Discuss the work to be done, clarify details, each estimator gets a set of cards
  2. A Facilitator asks each estimator to pick one numbered card from their set (each card has one number: 0, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…).
  3. Once each estimator has picked his card, the Facilitator asks that all the cards be shown
  4. If estimates differ (for example: two people estimated 5 chickens and the other estimated 13 chickens), assumptions which drove selection of the low and high numbers are discussed
  5. More operational definitions and details are requested from the Expert as needed (for example: I said that one third of the twenty diners were vegetarian but the chickens were very small)
  6. The estimation cycle repeats until there is agreement (our group agreed that 13 chickens would feed 20 people)

This method reduces bias of team members just agreeing with each other’s estimates for social or hierarchical reasons. Since everyone picked his number card in private then turned over the cards simultaneously, each had to make a first estimate based on his own understanding.

SEED Selection

Here is how SEED selection for Recent Hire mentoring terms works:

  1. Each SEED application is read independently by at least two executive Selection Committee members. Each member ends up reading about the same number of applications.
  2. Each Applicant is ranked H-High, M-Medium or L-Low, with roughly 1/3 of the names in each category. For example, if there were 84 applications and 7 on the committee, if the goal is 40 Participants, each Selection Committee member would read 24 applications and have more-or-less eight High, eight Medium, and eight Low rankings to distribute.
  3. The committee gets a week to make their evaluations. Then, they meet by phone for a one hour meeting. During the first half of that meeting, a Facilitator says the name of each applicant and the two Selection Committee members who have rated that person give their rating: H, M, or L. After all applicants have been given two ratings,
    discussions follow.
  4. Discussions are often around differences of interpretation of the application materials and relative value to Sun Engineering of the applicant. Energetic discussions happen when the same Applicant is rated High by one and Low by another.
  5. Another common discussion is about how many Medium/Mediums to include to achieve an appropriate and balanced diversity among the Participants. Diversity of demographics, geography, and professional area are all considered.
  6. All SEED applicants rated H,H and M,H and L,H are accepted and also some rated M,M. SEED does not accept applicants rated L,L (low by both reviewers) or M,L.

Because the Selection Committee are all executives who may be rating staff reporting to other committee members, keeping the ratings private until the actual phone meeting helps reduce bias of members just agreeing with each other’s ratings for social or hierarchical reasons. As with Planning Poker, discussions start with outlying values rather than discussing all the details and assumptions for each rating.

Using Planning Poker or the SEED selection method means that potentially complex decisions can be made very quickly and with relative ease. This makes it easier to recruit team members, especially in the case of SEED where the members are very busy executives.

Read more about the SEED mentoring program in Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009 by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot, and Helen Gracon (Sun Labs Technical Report TR-2009-185, August 2009).

Planning Poker set
DSCN8843		 . PM PM SIG
DSCN8845

Images Copyright 2010 Katy Dickinson
Links updated 25 March 2014

1 Comment

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , ,

January 13, 2010 · 11:38 am

“On Leadership” – Ivan Sutherland’s SEED talk, now on YouTube

I am very proud to announce that the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program just published “On Leadership” – its first public video. Thanks to SEED Matthias Mueller-Prove (in Germany) who first suggested making Ivan Sutherland’s important 2006 SEED talk public.

A Sun Labs team including Mary Holzer, Sheri Kaneshiro, and Alan Lancendorfer took SEED’s rough internal video and created a polished product which is now available for free viewing as the featured video on the Sun Labs home page. Tanya Jankot and Sheri Kaneshiro created the original 2006 video for SEED. John Plocher and I followed my daughter Jessica’s instructions on How to Post Videos Longer Than 10 Minutes to YouTube.

If you want to see the video of Ivan Sutherland’s 2006 SEED talk “On Leadership” on YouTube, link to the play list to see all 8 segments in sequence. This video is Copyright 2006-2010, Sun Microsystems (uploaded with permission).

In his inspirational talk to SEED’s annual meeting, Ivan Sutherland (Sun Vice President and Fellow, Internet pioneer, and Turing award winner) speaks from a lifetime of experience working with many of the leaders and key innovators in the field of computing. Ivan answered the following questions from the SEED audience:

  • “Where does change belong: managing change or leading change?”
  • “What is the future of Computer Science (in the next five years)?”
  • “Is leadership a property of nature or nurture?”
  • “What makes people want to become leaders?”
  • “How does ambition fit into leadership?”
  • “Can one person encompass both leadership and management?”
  • “Is leadership the same in different situations?”
  • “What is the difference between taking the lead and being a leader?”
  • “Does being a leader once qualify you for all time in the future?”

Since I set up and hosted the meeting at which Ivan spoke, you can hear a tiny bit of my voice just at the end of “On Leadership”.

I hope you enjoy watching it!

Links updated 25 March 2014

1 Comment

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , ,

January 6, 2010 · 5:45 pm

Process Success Measures

In 2002, I gave a lunchtime presentation on process design to Sun’s Six Sigma Black Belt community. In that talk I proposed two measures for process success. While any individual process will have its own particular success measures, two simple metrics for overall success for any process are:

  1. The process is used long-term by a variety of people.
  2. It is updated and improved by people other than the ones who created it.

I was reminded of those key measures this week when I used two very different but successful systems for which I have had the honor to be one of the architects:

  1. Sun Labs’ Archivist, an archival and clearance system for intellectual property
  2. El Camino Real Department of Missions (DOM), a management system for small congregations, many of them working and worshiping across cultural lines

Both the Archivist and DOM systems have now been in use for many years and are successfully managed by people who were not involved in their original development. I am proud of these projects and their phase transition from development to long-term sustained use. I am also pleased to see how well their pattern matches the two success metrics I proposed in 2002. Below is more about Archivist and DOM.

Sun Labs’ Archivist

In 2000, James Gosling, Jos Marlowe, and I started a two-year project to create a new archiving and clearance system for Sun Laboratories. You can read some of the history of this system in “Sun Labs: The Second Fifty Technical Reports A Commemorative Issue” by Jeanie Treichel, Katie Chiu, Christopher Wu and Jeanne Wang (Sun Labs Report TR-2009-101, published in March 2009).

We based the process for Archivist on a system created while I was the Process Architect for the Sun Standards group. That group needed a fast way to submit contributions to an SSO (Standards Setting Organization) such as the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), while protecting Sun’s intellectual property. Part of the SSO submission system was the Technical Information Clearance Process (TICP) which was a core piece of what became Archivist. The SSO submission process project team included Carl Cargill, Catherine Mccarthy, Lisa Goldman and Philip Rosenzweig. Sadly, Phil Rosenzweig died on one of the planes in New York City on 11 September 2001, before the SSO submission project was complete.

Here is the original Executive Overview for Archivist from 2000:

    Sun Labs is faced with a dilemma: we wish to derive the benefits of quality control and process while at the same time shortening our time-to-release. In particular, we wish to protect our intellectual property and increase our patent portfolio while simultaneously speeding up the time it takes to review technical information prior to publication. This process architecture is our attempt to resolve the dilemma. The Archivist is both an archival mechanism and a clearance process.

Think of The Archivist clearance process as a state dinner: the menu is fixed and protocol is closely observed. Think of The Archivist Fasttrack as a scramble-bar cafeteria where one can select individual dishes. The advantage of a state dinner is that it is safe, repeatable, and the participants know exactly what to expect (with regard to structure). The advantage of a cafeteria is that it is flexible and very fast. We expect that as the Fasttrack cafeteria grows in its selection and quality of service, the volume of users will shift from The Archivist clearance to Fasttrack clearance: thus, cycle time will be greatly reduced.

Here is the 2000 description for use of Archivist for clearance and archiving:

Clearance is distinct from archival. Archived material may or may not go through clearance.

Examples of archived material are:

  • An email or a note describing an idea
  • Audio and video tapes
  • Objects (such as boards)
  • Letters
  • Notebooks

Examples of documents that have been cleared are:

  • White papers (either on paper or the web)
  • SML Tech reports (paper or web)
  • Third-party publications (e.g. conferences, encyclopedias)
  • External presentations

Rule of thumb: if you think your document will be leaked or by any means published outside, use the process.

Sun Labs started in 1991, so Archivist was not the first archiving system for Sun Labs but it has been by many times the longest lived. In creating Archivist, we identified two key customers: Ivan Sutherland (Sun Fellow and Vice President), and Jeanie Treichel (Sun Labs founding Program Manager and Technical Reports Editor). Ivan Sutherland is famous in Sun Labs for his saying “It’s not an idea until you write it down.” There were many other reviewers and contributors but we knew that if Ivan and Jeanie were happy with Archivist, it would be good enough for everyone else.

Archivist has gone through several major revisions since it was created in 2000. It has been used by hundreds of Sun Labs staff in the US, UK, and France to enter over ten thousand items. Archivist continues in active use today under the management of Sun Labs’ technical staff.

As of now, I have 113 of my own documents entered into Archivist. Recently, Helen Gracon and I entered into Archivist most of the key documents from the Mentoring@Sun program. More about Mentoring@Sun is available in the recent Sun Labs Technical Report “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009” (by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot, and Helen Gracon).

El Camino Real Department of Missions

From 2003-2007, I was the volunteer Convener for DIEM (the Department of Intercultural Evangelism and Mission), providing oversight, finance, and management support to thirteen mission congregations (Latino, Anglo, and Asian) of the El Camino Real Episcopal Diocese. I served as Convener under two Bishops: the (late) Right Reverend Richard Shimpfky, and the Rt. Rev. Sylvestre D. Romero.

2003-2007 was a difficult time of transition for our diocese but nonetheless the elected and appointed DIEM members developed a solid process for Mission Liaisons, as well as the “Mission and Vision” structure for the missions as a group. The “Mission Congregation Liaison Job Description” was only one page long but it represents an amiable solution to years of discussion on how best to provide mission oversight.

In 2008, I was elected to DOM (the successor to DIEM) for a three year term. At last night’s monthly DOM meeting, I was pleased to get slightly updated versions of the process documents DIEM created in 2005 while I was Convener. DOM and its nine remaining missions is now managed by our new Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves, with the Rev. Canon Jesus Reyes acting as Convener.

28 March 2014 and 6 January 2018- links and formatting of this blog post were updated

1 Comment

Filed under Church, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 17, 2009 · 10:24 pm

How Speed Mentoring Works

SEED (Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development) is Sun Microsystems Engineering’s world-wide employee mentoring program, started in 2001. Speed mentoring is SEED’s newest offering: a series of short focused conversations about specific questions. This business method can serve as an introduction for mentees and mentors both to mentoring and to each other.

The first SEED Speed Mentoring session was held at Sun Microsystems during lunchtime on 9 December 2009 in Menlo Park, California. Thirteen mentors and twenty mentees signed up. 88% of the mentors and mentees reported being satisfied to very satisfied with their experience. No one reported being dissatisfied. Thanks to Helen Gracon, Rob Snevely, and Rick Aaron for supporting me in running this event!

Topics most discussed were:

  • Career development (77%)
  • Improving professional visibility (65%)
  • Technical skills development (54%)
  • Improving leadership or management skills (50%)
  • Discussing best path to success (46%)

Some replies to the follow-up survey question “What would you say to someone who was interested in participating in a future SEED Speed Mentoring session?”:

  • Excellent service from Sun. Anyone who is interested in career development, should avail this one.
  • Go for it but don’t expect it to answer all your questions.
  • Know what you want to get out of the sessions ahead of time. Try to conduct some research on who the mentors are ahead of time.
  • Sure. Do it. It’s a few hours that has a decent chance of broadening your perspectives.
  • Go in with a plan of what you want to discuss. Be aware of the limitations of such an exercise.
  • I would highly recommend it. It doesn’t take much time at all but can quickly provide some feedback and give one’s thinking process a nudge.
  • Please participate, since it inspires you to do routine things differently. It provides useful pointers to making career changes. It helps to make better choices Towards technical skills gained at work.

There are probably many successful ways to run a speed mentoring event. Here is SEED’s instruction document (approved for public distribution), complete with a flow chart:

How Speed Mentoring Works (4 pages, PDF format)

Pictures from the first SEED Speed Mentoring Session:

DSCN7913 . DSCN7916
DSCN7920 . DSCN7928

Images Copyright 2009 Katy Dickinson
Edited and updated 15 May 2018

2 Comments

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business

Tagged as , , ,

October 28, 2009 · 2:05 pm

After the RIF notice, before you leave

Family Update

In light of Sun’s current circumstances, here is an update of what I think is my most popular blog entry: “After the RIF notice, before you leave” (15 January 2009).

My husband, John Plocher, was laid off from Sun in November 2008 and (despite many interviews) is still looking for work. If anyone is looking to hire a senior software architect with extensive open source experience, please contact John!

This has been a wild year for our family. A few weeks after I wrote my “After the RIF notice..” blog entry, our son Paul ended up in emergency brain surgery. Paul recovered from that but still has constant terrible headaches. After finishing his Junior year at the hospital school, Paul is happy to be back in his regular High School for his Senior year. He plans to go to college next year. Having John off work during this time of medical adventures has been sortof a blessing.

Background

During the last year, we have found a good many things we wished we had thought to do before John was laid off. Additional items on this list were generously suggested to me from people who read my original 15 January blog entry. I eventually realized that official company sources are limited in what they can tell people. So, this unofficial list, while just based on limited observations and experience, turns out to have been of unique value to a variety of people. RIF stands for “Reduction in Force”, also known as a lay off or restructuring.

Here are my opinions of some good actions to consider after the termination notice but before you leave Sun and lose your SunWeb access (and some actions to consider after). Some of these actions may only be appropriate for Sun staff in California since circumstances may differ from state-to-state, and country-to-country. Some actions – like joining LinkedIn – are good ideas whether you are staying or leaving. Usual disclaimers apply. Your mileage may vary. May contain nuts.

First, if you have to leave Sun involuntarily, please accept my appreciation for your work. After  25 years of working here, I know that Sun is a great company. Even if I never knew or worked with you, I thank you for your contribution and I am sorry you have been laid off. Check out “A Tribute to Sun Microsystems” and remember your good times.

What to do immediately

  1. Before your SunWeb access shuts down, print out copies of key records:
    – Current and last year paycheck history
    – Company training history
    – Stock option history and status
    – Health benefit elections
    – Vacation balance
    – Past annual performance review documents
    Many of these records will just go away and be unavailable by any means soon after your last day in the office. You may need your training history for a future certification, and you will certainly need your vacation balance to apply for unemployment. This is your one and only chance to get copies.
  2. Immediately locate all personal internet identities (personal accounts, groups, billing, etc.) that you have communicating with your @sun.com email address, and change them to your personal email address. It is easy to set up a gmail account where you can continue to manage your billpay, website subscriptions and email lists after your Sun account goes away. Moving accounts will take time and those organizations may continue to send updates and confirmations to you @sun.com
    for days or even weeks. Start this move soon!
  3. Your Sun home directory will go away very shortly after your last office day. If you have personal email in your Sun home directory, move it or copy it to a home server or your personal laptop before your Sun home directory disappears. Gmail has a way to upload old messages from other email accounts. Don’t copy anything that belongs to Sun.
  4. If you have not already done so, use your Employee Giving matching grant for the current year. If you do not have a SunWeb account (and you will not), you cannot take advantage of this benefit even if you are laid off long before the end of the calendar year.
  5. Create a blogs.sun.com account or use your existing account to post a brief and professional going away message including at least your LinkedIn reference. Your blogs.sun.com postings stay available after you are gone.
  6. Change your Sun voice mail outgoing message with a new professionally phrased reference to your home phone or other non-Sun phone number.

What to do later

Resources which may help and actions to consider later:

  1. Sun provides some very good benefits to RIFed staff. Use any coaching services offered as part of your package (such as the excellent Right Management service). Let the service review your resume before you send it out. Join their networking groups.
  2. Think through your health, dental, vision, and life insurance choices and application timelines. Read your RIF package carefully. If the staff member who is laid off is the spouse of a continuing Sun staff member, talk with Human Resources (SunDial) soon about when and how you can initiate a “Qualifying Life Event Change” to provide insurance coverage to the RIFed spouse.
  3. File for Unemployment Insurance (UI) immediately. In most states there is at least a one week waiting period and some states may have more. In California, you can apply for Unemployment Insurance from the day of your notification (while you may still have months yet to receive Sun paychecks).
    If you are asked by the California Employment Development Department, do not call money Sun provides you after the 60-day WARN notification period “severance”. It is accurate to call it “payment to forestall legal action”.  More about the 60 days of WARN pay: The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. I am told that while WARN is a type of “in lieu of” pay, WARN should NOT disqualify you from receiving UI benefits. For even more about this, read EDD’s Total and Partial Unemployment TPU 460.37.
    Here is Sun’s address and phone number which you will need for the EDD paperwork – from Sun’s 2008 Annual Report:

    Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    4150 Network Circle Santa Clara, CA 95054
    (650) 960-1300

  4. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is a networking and lunch group called CSix where job hunters share ideas and leads. Similar formal or informal groups probably exist elsewhere.
  5. Review and update your resume. Create one or more cover letter templates. Review and confirm your references. (You need to know that Sun and other companies have a policy against giving job references.) Brush up on your interview skills.
  6. Buy a current-year copy of the book What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles. This book is available in many languages (French, Korean, Russian, Turkish…). Also check out the resources on Dick Bolles’ web site: JobHuntersBible.Com
  7. Join LinkedIn – a social networking web site for professionals who want to extend their contacts. Follow LinkedIn’s advice to create your complete profile. Be diligent in linking to your former Sun coworkers so that you don’t lose each other once you are no longer @sun.com. Use LinkedIn to recommend people you think highly of and also ask them to recommend you. There are several LinkedIn Sun Alumni groups, including SUNAlumni. Sun Engineering SEED mentoring program alumni can join the SEED LinkedIn group.
  8. Join the Sun Microsystems Alumni Association “The network is the people”
  9. Consider other social networking sites such as Facebook which has several Sun Alumni groups, including: The Sun Microsystems Alumni Group, Sun Alumni on Facebook, and others. Facebook also has a “SEED Engineering Mentoring Program” Fan Page. Plaxo is another good networking, address book site.
  10. Participate in Sun Alumni Blogs
  11. Make your own business cards so that you can easily tell contacts your new email and phone. John and I like the designs at Overnight Prints.
  12. Make doctor, dentist, and other health care appointments soon, so you are seen while you are still insured. Renew prescriptions that are close to refills. The U.S.  COBRA continuation health insurance coverage isn’t always the same as the coverage you had before.
  13. Consider creating a special job seeking email address at yahoo.com or gmail.com. Make it professional, not cute.
  14. A job searching and recruitment web site which some people have recommended is http://www.dice.com/
    – “career website for technology and engineering professionals”
  15. A job searching web site which some people have recommended is http://www.indeed.com/ “to search job sites, newspapers, associations and company career pages”

Keep active and keep networking. Volunteer while looking for work. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and need a good cause, you are welcome to join John and me in helping inner city San Jose kids in the computer club at SMUM.

Don’t lose touch with Sun people you care about. As John says, there are only really 100 people in the Silicon Valley, everyone else is just there to create traffic jams.

2 Comments

Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as , ,