Anonymously contributed:
The story below about the death of Boeing's Super-Weapons Lab will sound *very* familiar to anyone who has been working at LLNL or LANL over the last few years. It probably should get its own top level posing on this blog:
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Bureaucracy, Labor Woes Doom Super-Weapons Lab
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/mega-weapons-lab/
10 comments:
This is classic and all too familiar:
A series of corporate missteps doomed the lab, Lamont said. He blamed Boeing’s marketing department for adding unnecessary layers of bureaucracy to Building 31. “Customers who were used to plainly walking in and fixing the U.S. government’s issues now had multiple departments and skyrocketing costs to deal with.”
The bureaucracy drove up costs, according to Gary Quick, a longtime lab employee. “It’s an inverted pyramid that’s got us at the pointed end — and it’s crushing us,” Quick, a diver trained to recover rocket parts, told Danger Room.
An overpaid, bloated management team that lives off the increasingly complex bureaucracy they create.
Hey, Boeing... We, the for-profit NNSA labs, did it first! We are a Center of Excellence at it.
I guess there is some strange comfort in knowing we are not the only US weapons research lab that is being run into the ground.
God help this nation in the future. We are destroying our nation's national security research capabilities at a truly frightening rate! Only the slick PR material remains.
The "inverted pyramid" at LANL will soon consist of 9,999 managers and just 1 technical staff member who is on direct funding and does the lab's scientific research. LANS will like it that way as it will make the lab much easier to manage!
However, the last remaining direct-funded TSM is going to have an incredibly high labor rate due to the overhead burden.
I guess upper management will then decide they need to get cut this poor TSM's pension and benefits to compensate for his high labor costs.
You guys don't get it the so called bureaucracy is modern management that leads to increased efficiency. Boeing is in the business of making money. If this was so great they would keep it, apparently it was not.
You guys don't get it the so called bureaucracy is modern management that leads to increased efficiency. (6:55 am)
Those must be some mighty powerful medications you're taking, 6:55! They do a wonderful job blocking out the dismal reality that is evident around the "new and improved" LLC run labs.
Super weapons?
One of many similar development labs.... a good one, but one with many competitors in a field where performance matters less than campaign donations and beltway nimbleness..(and perhaps the talent of the escorts provided to congressional staff).
This is a place whose employees took a gamble, and unfortunately, struck. Withholding services emphasizes the value of those services.
These were found wanting or duplicated.
Gamble failed.
These were found wanting or duplicated. Gamble failed.
December 2, 2011 4:17 PM
How little you know, 4:17pm. These are the patriot scientists who developed the secretive Boeing X-37 mini-shuttle. This shuttle was designed for missions that only last a few weeks or months but this innovative mini-shuttle has now been in continuous service for over 250 days and may stay up for a full year protecting American vital interests.
Do some research before sizing up things you know little about with your attitude of arrogance.
"Do some research before sizing up things you know little about with your attitude of arrogance." ?
Did I miss something in the article? Talented employees went on strike for 90 days, during that time the sponsor cancelled future work.
Misread it?
"Misread it?
December 5, 2011 1:42 PM"
Boeing also took a gamble and judging from how they are doing right now they lost.
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