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Sunday, January 23, 2011
What impact does the salary freeze have on your behavior?
Anonymous wants to know: What impact does the salary freeze have on your behavior?
11 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Note: This comment was moved here by Scooby, as a courtesy to a commenter who put it in the "new topic" post. Please read to see what the new topic section for: It is for new posts. wait for them to be posted before you comment:
Last year I received he worst raise of my 30+ year career. A salary freeze will now free me from wondering if I am going to be shafted again. Will it cause me to change my work habits? No, I will grumble a little but I work with a team and if I slack off I will hurt them more than I hurt LLNS/NNSA/DOE.
But in the near future when I walk out the gate at retirement, I'll flip the place the bird and not look back with longing in my heart.
When the Stimulus Bill funding was received by the NNSA labs, it required the compensation amounts for the Directors to be made public. This is information that both LLNS and LANS have tried very hard to cover up under the lame excuse of "corporate proprietary information".
For example, it was shown in press accounts that LANL's Director Anastasio is compensated to the tune of around $1 million per year in total (LANS/UC, 20% bonus, etc). SNL's Hunter was compensated at about the rate of $2 million per year. A recent post on this blog also demonstrated some of the outlandish perks that lab executives like Brett Knapp make.
These lab salaries and perks are several times higher than those that Directors, PADs and ADs made during the early years of 2000s. The new lab system of management has been extremely profitable for anyone on the LLC executive team.
To this situation, add in the low raises and benefit cuts of the last few years for the non-management staff coupled with the recent announcement of no possibility of raises for several more years. This has greatly de-moralized many employees at the labs. Trust in the top levels of management is at an all time low from what I have witnessed. It was never that high before the labs for-profit coup, but the sense of mistrust and feelings of outright betrayal is now becoming very common within the employees who remain at these NNSA labs.
Meanwhile, the LLC upper management team attempt to sugar-coat the situation and claim that morale is good and improving. This only worsens the feelings of those who see what has occurred over the last few years.
The impact of all this is extremely low morale, which results in performance that may meet the largely meaningless PBI metrics that NNSA and the LLCs like to constantly create but this low morale is the kiss of death to any truly creative science lab. In our culture, "value" is largely demonstrated by compensation. I'm pretty sure that the recent 10% increase in salaries of all the profession employees who work for Google has all of those employees working very hard and their morale at extremely high levels.
The true impact of this situation will come in the next few year once the employment situation improves and housing rebounds. I expect to see a lot of the younger and middle aged scientific staff head out the front doors of the NNSA labs and look for other institutions in which to practice their creative talents.
The news has been all over the press today that Google is planning on hiring thousands of new computer-skilled employees for this next year. Even better, they gave all their current employees a 10% raise this year.
You think weapon designers can work for Google? They wouldn't even consider you. Lots of plugged-in 30 year olds with no brains and no credentials they'd love to hire,
Just a place to go and hang out, have coffee, surf the internet, take care of personal business, go exercise, go to lunch, use up 2000 hours of sick leave.
11 comments:
Note: This comment was moved here by Scooby, as a courtesy to a commenter who put it in the "new topic" post. Please read to see what the new topic section for:
It is for new posts. wait for them to be posted before you comment:
Last year I received he worst raise of my 30+ year career. A salary freeze will now free me from wondering if I am going to be shafted again. Will it cause me to change my work habits? No, I will grumble a little but I work with a team and if I slack off I will hurt them more than I hurt LLNS/NNSA/DOE.
But in the near future when I walk out the gate at retirement, I'll flip the place the bird and not look back with longing in my heart.
When the Stimulus Bill funding was received by the NNSA labs, it required the compensation amounts for the Directors to be made public. This is information that both LLNS and LANS have tried very hard to cover up under the lame excuse of "corporate proprietary information".
For example, it was shown in press accounts that LANL's Director Anastasio is compensated to the tune of around $1 million per year in total (LANS/UC, 20% bonus, etc). SNL's Hunter was compensated at about the rate of $2 million per year. A recent post on this blog also demonstrated some of the outlandish perks that lab executives like Brett Knapp make.
These lab salaries and perks are several times higher than those that Directors, PADs and ADs made during the early years of 2000s. The new lab system of management has been extremely profitable for anyone on the LLC executive team.
To this situation, add in the low raises and benefit cuts of the last few years for the non-management staff coupled with the recent announcement of no possibility of raises for several more years. This has greatly de-moralized many employees at the labs. Trust in the top levels of management is at an all time low from what I have witnessed. It was never that high before the labs for-profit coup, but the sense of mistrust and feelings of outright betrayal is now becoming very common within the employees who remain at these NNSA labs.
Meanwhile, the LLC upper management team attempt to sugar-coat the situation and claim that morale is good and improving. This only worsens the feelings of those who see what has occurred over the last few years.
The impact of all this is extremely low morale, which results in performance that may meet the largely meaningless PBI metrics that NNSA and the LLCs like to constantly create but this low morale is the kiss of death to any truly creative science lab. In our culture, "value" is largely demonstrated by compensation. I'm pretty sure that the recent 10% increase in salaries of all the profession employees who work for Google has all of those employees working very hard and their morale at extremely high levels.
The true impact of this situation will come in the next few year once the employment situation improves and housing rebounds. I expect to see a lot of the younger and middle aged scientific staff head out the front doors of the NNSA labs and look for other institutions in which to practice their creative talents.
I have turned into a mushroom.
I have to steal food to eat from the lab trash cans more often. Please be generous with your offerings.
I was doing good until Chu made his command offering of our butts to the Obamanator. I think the U S of A is finished. Time to file bankruptcy
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0111/012011l2.htm
The news has been all over the press today that Google is planning on hiring thousands of new computer-skilled employees for this next year. Even better, they gave all their current employees a 10% raise this year.
You think weapon designers can work for Google? They wouldn't even consider you. Lots of plugged-in 30 year olds with no brains and no credentials they'd love to hire,
Acceptable service in the national interest.
Just a place to go and hang out, have coffee, surf the internet, take care of personal business, go exercise, go to lunch, use up 2000 hours of sick leave.
I'm looking for a mid-morning tryst.
So all you guys have declared your own careers at an end? Are your wives and kids ok with that?
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