Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
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On one hand, it seems that Management should be "held accountable" for things that happen within their organization. The Manager failed by either knowing about it and not responding, or by allowing such poor communication to exist that he didn't know what was going on.
But by that logic, we'd fire them all, up through the President, who owns the organization at the top level. This probably isn't right either.
How to draw the line? I'd be interested to know how much annual budget this guy is responsible for. If the conference debacle was worth 0.1% of that, he should be responsible; seems like you ought to be able to manage at 1 part in 1000.
For less than that, I'd require an independent management review. That would make his life miserable for a while, and motivate him to pay more attention.
Science is slowly suffocating. Meanwhile, I see no cut-backs in the extensive travel that is allowed for the upper management team. The lab Directors still travel in first class and only stay at the best hotels.