PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PRE-DISCUSSION WORKSHEET FOR INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS NAME: Don Hopkins DEPT.# DATE Procedure for completing the Pre-Discussion Worksheet: Completion of this worksheet is entirely voluntary. It is intended to ensure a two-way discussion of your performance between you and your supervisor/manager. The purpose of this worksheet is to allow you to take an active, positive role in the performance evaluation process. By completing the worksheet you will be in a better position to draw attention to your accomplishments, to highlight areas where you believe you have demonstrated strengths and to provide ideas on ways that your performance can be optimized in the future. Essential to successful evaluation are goals and objectives, against which you can measure specific results. Your present position: Member technical staff, NeWS Technology What were your major job duties and assignments? (Give a brief description of your overall responsibilities, tasks or duties.) To design, implement, test, fix, maintain, use & evangelize The NeWS Toolkit. To work with TNT applications and provide feedback to the design of the toolkit and other applications. What were your goals and objectives for this evaluation period? Develop a global understanding of TNT, and how it relates to the server and to applications. Design, implement, and debug TNT to be most excellent. Write interesting demos and applications. Help other people use and think about NeWS. Did you hold other positions during this evaluation period? If so, what were they? Liaison to Ruby when they were exploring the use of TNT. Member of the NeWS Archetecture Group. RESULTS DEMONSTRATED: Sun's results orientation has helped us get where we are today. Your ability to get the job done across the finish line is reflected in this performance factor. Based on established goals and objectives what results did you achieve? If a goal changed, how much progress did you make toward the revised goal? What additional contribu- tions did you make? Were there accomplishments that were definitely outstanding? (These results should be consistent with quarterly reviews and monthly status reports.) Alphabetized list of achievements. Created sliders and gauges. Designed and implemented 2D/3D Open Look drawing code. Experimented with thin wire TNT applications. Gave feedback into olglyph outline font design. Helped out with the NeWS Challenge. Implemented raster imaging demos for Ruby. Integrated TNT V2 code into V3 hierarchy. Made TNT work with multiple displays. Overhauled pinned menus. Participated in design of NeWS debugger. Read source code to many TNT applications. Studied HyperNeWS and participated in its redesign. Talked with many TNT application developers. Tested RasterOps graphics board to make it work with TNT. Worked on text and numeric fields, settings, windows, selections. QUALITY OF WORK: To ensure a total quality effort, each of us must be thorough, accurate and responsive. Quality refers to the level of integrity in your work and the extent to which you serve your (internal or external) customers. What examples can you recall of instances in which you were responsive to your customers, especially thorough in your work, or successful in completing a quality job? Put together and fixed up NeWS software for a demo CD. Ported HyperNeWS 1.4 to run under TNT 2.0. Did a nice job with 2D/3D Open Look & multiple displays. Reviewed the TNT and GNT manuals. Overhauled menus to be simpler, smaller, and faster. Payed lots of attention to implementing a solid, bullet proof look and feel, testing interfaces by brutally pounding on them under diverse conditions. SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FACTORS AND SCALE OF IMPORTANCE Due to the wide variety of positions at Sun, the performance factors may differ in relative importance, depending on the exact nature of your job. Five performance factors are described. The space below each factor provides an opportunity to "spell out" how important that factor is to your work. If other factors are critical to your work, they should be described and evaluated in #6. 1. LEADERSHIP AND DECISION MAKING: Sun must be able to rely on the leadership capabilities of all employees. Having a clear sense of priorities, logically analyzing situations, exercising sound judgment and being able to work with very little supervision are important, along with having the ability to organize and influence others. What leader- ship and decision making abilities have you demonstrated? Have you led any projects? Have you made major decisions or exercised critical judgment? Scale of importance of this performance factor for your position: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- extremely important | very important | IMPORTANT | somewhat important --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your comments for this section: I am not in a position of leadership, but I work well with little supervision, and I am pleased when my suggestions and design decisions are taken seriously and I'm given a chance to explain them and try to make them work. At the same time I feel it's OK to make proposals that I'm not sure will work, because discussing an incorrect solution can shed light on a problem, guiding the way to implementing a correct solution. 2. RESOURCEFULNESS AND CREATIVITY: Your work may be highly technical and complex or straightforward and predictable. No matter what position you have at Sun, resourcefulness and creativity can be crucial. The extent to which you add unique vale to your job and make improvements ensures our continued success. How have you improved on existing processes and procedures? In what ways have you added unique value to your job? Scale of importance of this performance factor for your position: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- EXTREMELY IMPORTANT | very important | important | somewhat important --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your comments for this section: Implemented TNT pizzatool, to demonstrate the unique capabilities of TNT, the use of the PostScript imaging model, object oriented coding style, various NeWS programming techniques, unconventional window managment, animation, a complex dynamically changing user interface, and most practically, to exercise and flush out many bugs in the toolkit. Found it to be useful for all kinds of things, even ordering pizza! Implemented pie menus and tab windows for personal gratification. Video taped a demonstration of tab window managment with pie menus, to go along with a paper I'm writing about it. 3. FUNCTIONAL/TECHNICAL SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE: Maintaining our competitive edge in the technical field is critical. The extent to which you keep abreast of the functional/technical requirements of your position and are regarded as an expert in what you do provides evidence of your ability. What have you done to demonstrate your expertise? What measures have you taken to ensure that your skills are state-of-the-art? Scale of importance of this performance factor for your position: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- EXTREMELY IMPORTANT | very important | important | somewhat important --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your comments for this section: For years I have tried very hard to learn everything I could about NeWS. I have also studied obsolete window systems such as X10 and X11, to learn from their mistakes, and cutting edge window systems such as Macintosh and NeXT Step, that we should be competing with. 4. COMMUNICATION AND TEAMWORK: A key factor within Sun is the effective exchange of ideas, information and instructions. This means having the ability to communicate verbally and in writing, as well as possessing good interpersonal skills. In what ways have you successfully interacted with others? How would you evaluate your verbal and nonverbal skills? Have you made effective presentations? Whether you work alone or are an integral part of a project team, Sun's success depends upon your connections with other systems and employees. Teamwork reflects the degree to which you make an effort to cooperatively interact with others to improve the overall functioning of Sun and to achieve mutual objectives. How has cooperative interaction with other members of the Sun team been a part of your work? Scale of importance of this performance factor for your position: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- extremely important | VERY IMPORTANT | important | somewhat important --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your comments for this section: I've been able to communicate very well with the people in my group. Especially Don Woods, who has a global understanding of the toolkit and the problems and possible solutions involved, that really reinforces my belief in the shared consentual hallucination of the whole system. I was interviewed about PizzaTool, resulting in a positive article about Sun and TNT in "Unix Today!", so I must have said the right things. 5. RELIABILITY: Just as our customers must be able to count on the performance of our products over time, we have to be able to count on each other to meet the commitments we have made. Reliability refers to "being there" and coming through time after time, project after project. It also means you can be counted on to do your job in a timely manner. To what extent have others been able to count on your "being there" time after time, project after project? Scale of importance of this performance factor for your position: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- extremely important | VERY IMPORTANT | important | somewhat important --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your comments for this section: In order to really get a lot of work done I have to work alone and uninterrupted, so I work late at night a lot, because there's a lot of work to do. The team is spread very thin, so it's a good thing NeWS gives us so much leverage. 6. OTHER PERFORMANCE FACTORS: Are there additional areas of contribution on which you believe you should be evaluated? Your comments for this section: I've been trying to use as much of our technology as I can in my day to day (or night to night) work, in order to stress test it make it useable. I've been regularly using Stan Switzer's "muxer" program to run NeWS applications over a 9600 baud modem. I'm developing a gnu emacs TNT interface designed to work well over thin wire and exploit the extensible client server model. I've helped to promote TNT, by participating in the NeWS Challange (as a judge and consultant), evangelizing TNT on the net, making an illustration for a trade show blurb, and giving demos. How would you describe your overall performance? (Briefly summarize how well you met the performance requirements and job objectives during the period being evaluated) Fanatic. What do you see as your major strengths? Fanaticism. Lots of specialized experience. What areas for enhancement and improvement do you recognize? Learning how to be managed. I am trying not to be obnoxious, but unfortunatly it sometimes seems my job requires it. But at least I wasn't hired to be nice. What makes up your development action plan? What steps do you see for optimizing your performance: (a) in your present job: (b) to increase your potential for advancement: (c) to move in the direction of a career change: ACTION TARGET DATE FOR COMPLETION ------ -------------------------- Implement, help to implement, or inspire the implementation of key TNT applications, like: PostScript previewer, bug tool, workspace properties, color choser, dsdm, olwm, etc... However long it takes. What goals, objectives and key tasks do you foresee for the next evaluation period? HyperNewS and PdB development. Making an NeWS friendly desktop. What kind of support do these goals and objectives entail? What organizational resources are necessary to achieve the stated goals? What can your manager do to assist you? What type of "buy-in" do you need from your manager for optimal performance? What would make your job easier and more productive? Sun *must* support the Turing Institute's development of HyperNeWS. Sun needs to be committed to integrating TNT with Sun's value added, desktop, and multimedia libraries and servers, such as tooltalk, link manager, DOMF, XGL, audio, video, ISDN, etc. TNT programmers must be able to use all these resources as easily as X programmers. If I had ISDN between work and home, I would use it regularly and develop thin wire TNT applications to use it well. We need to be able to test our code on every type of hardware that NeWS runs on, including strange framebuffers, NeWS terminals, and competing workstations, as such ports become available.