JDSU Archives - The Grassy Road

The dark side of Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is on a roll right now. The relatively low levels of capital needed to start a software company has meant that start up incubators and small software companies wanting to be the "next big thing" are popping up all over. Bars are crowded, San Francisco is hip and traffic is worse than L.A. All signs of a booming economy and tech infrastructure that has spawned new wealth-generators like Facebook, Zynga, Instagram and now Yammer. And yet, this is just the face we like to present to the world. [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:57:05-08:00June 18, 2012|Equality|0 Comments

Diversity helps when you need to recruit the best

Needing to hire the "best and the brightest" is like motherhood and apple pie. No-one can argue with it. And yet it is harder than you'd think for many companies. Great prospective employees can pick and choose and they make their decisions as often on soft issues like who they'd work with/for and what the culture of the company is like as they do on hard issues like project, title and pay.At FirstRain we work hard to create a fun work environment and to be innovative in our culture - [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:14:07-08:00August 12, 2010|Equality|0 Comments

When too much marketing hurts

I spent half an hour this afternoon listening to Kevin Kennedy, CEO of JDSU, present at the Citibank financial conference in New York. My objective was to continue to come up to speed on JDSU as a new board member, and also to give Kevin feedback on his presentation. Kevin is a world class CEO and a thorough and detailed presenter - deeply operational and no spin.At the same time, earlier today, I had lunch with a former Monitor 110 employee who was seeking career advice and we had a [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:23:56-08:00September 3, 2008|Leadership|2 Comments