Friday, January 10, 2014
Director search
Dear Members of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Community:
I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on the status of our search for the next LLNL Director.
The Search Committee, which I chair, met at the Laboratory on January 9, 2014 to hear from former Lab Directors Parney Albright, George Miller and Bruce Tarter, five employee focus groups, and Livermore Field Office Manager Kim Davis Lebak. T he five employee focus groups, formed by the Director’s Office with input from each of the directorates , included technical senior managers, mid - career scientists and engineers (S&Es), early - career S&Es, functional representatives, and professional/administrative staff. The Search Committee will use input from Lab Day to further develop selection criteria to be used to assess the candidates during the search process to determine the best individual for the position.
The position description has been widely posted and nation ally advertised. Additionally, requests for nominations have been sent to a broad national audience. To receive full consideration, nominations and applications need to be submitted by January 31, 2014 as instructed on the LLNL Director Search web page: https://www.llnl.gov/director - search.
The Screening Task Force, chaired by Texas A&M Professor Marvin Adams, is meeting on February 11, 2014 to develop a list of approximately 15 candidates to recommend to the Search Committee. The Search Committee will use these recommendations and consider other potential candidates to develop the short list of individuals to interview for the position. Interviews are expected to occur in the March time frame.
As a reminder, it is the responsibility of the University of California (UC) to nominate the candidate for LLNL Director in accordance with UC Regental policy and the LLC Agreement. Appointment of the Lab Director is subject to the approval of the LLNS Executive Committee and the concurrence of the Energy Secretary and NNSA Administrator.
Let me encourage you to submit your comments regarding the Lab Director and any nominations via the LLNL Director Search web page noted above. The Search Committee and Screening Task Force are charged to hold all information received and their discussions in complete confidence.
Regards,
Norman J. Pattiz (UC Regent)
Chairman, LLNL Director Search Committee
Chairman, LLNS, LLC Board of Governors
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133 comments:
Doubtful there will be 15 people who want the job.
What a dog and pony show. Come on Norm Pattiz who did Mara and Aanastasio and McMillan and Knapp tell you Pick?
Who would want to be LLNL director? Captain of a sinking ship, guiding it into the abyss while catching arrows from DC, the press, LLNS and all the employees? Declining budgets but high expectations of impossible success, all for relatively little compensation? Sign me up...
... but gets to declare victory for the National Ignition Campaign !
Priceless !
Clearly will be a "political" appointment. Look, we had Parney, a Director who demonstrated that he could get things done. He told NNSA and the D.C. puppets the truth about issues involving the Lab. He had the wherewithal to show the gate to people who deserved it (i.e. Tomas); employees liked him because of his forthrightness, technical acumen, humor, and genuine concern for the employees. So what are they going to give us now? someone equal or better? Ha! I register my vote of NO CONFIDENCE in the LLNS board...
This pick is sooo important. LLNL's decline must be stemmed.
NNSA incompentents have been kicking the labs around since the establishment of the restrictive new contracts. The culture of excellence; of personnel, of policies, and programs - established over 50 years under UC guidance - is almost gone.
Superceded by a culture of mediocrity, of acquiescence and compliance and of waiting for NNSA direction.
The new guy needs to be a strong weapons scientist with a vision, but mostly must be a bloodthirsty conqueror. One who needs to defeat the overlords of Forestal and one who can stand up to Obama's bumbling advisers.
The new guy needs to be a strong weapons scientist with a vision, but mostly must be a bloodthirsty conqueror.
January 11, 2014 at 5:17 PM
That sounds like Bret Knapp, mostly the later part. You can't have everything Livermore, please take him back, please.....
The new guy needs to be a strong weapons scientist with a vision, but mostly must be a bloodthirsty conqueror.
Rest assured that this sort of person will not be appointed.....people are not to be made uncomfortable these days!
Knapp does not have a Ph.D. (and neither do other managers at LANL and Sandia)
Yes, we got that.
Knapp does not have a Ph.D. (and neither do other managers at LANL and Sandia)
January 12, 2014 at 9:51 PM
Your point?
Knapp does not have a Ph.D. (and neither do other managers at LANL and Sandia)
January 12, 2014 at 9:51 PM
Sad occasion that LLNL has a Lab Director without a brain.
Keep repeating the same dumb argument. Sounds like you didn't even make GED. and
Keep repeating the same dumb argument. Sounds like you didn't even make GED. and
January 14, 2014 at 7:06 AM
I want to see evidence that Knapp has a GED.
I heard he's not even an American. They say he is but he was really born in Kenya, and I've never seen his birth certificate up close.
And I heard he was once in a chili cookoff
no chili in a chili cookoff? must be a terrorist.
I heard he once hired an illegal alien as a nanny.
There are so many brainless employees with PhDs at Sandia and LANL and LLNL. It is reasonable to assume that PhDs have had to jump through more hoops than mere masters. But the phd does not necessarily amount to more intelligence. You will find some of the most profoundly stupid people with PhDs, incapable of inductive reasoning, gracing the offices at the national labs. You may think Sandia is full of stupidity due to the lack of PhDs in management there. I am just telling you that the rampant stupidity is a side-product of something else - white-collar welfare and the lack of institutional drivers such as competition and merit-based performance appraisals which leads to what I will call a lab "idiocracy."
The most competent person in the SNL senior leadership is far and away Jill Hruby, who has no PhD. That being said, LLNL isn't SNL, and there are good reasons for requiring a PhD. And it is not likely that Hruby will succeed Hommert. Here are some reasons for "why a PhD?". First, for the majority of the S&T staff at llnl, a PhD is required for professional standing. Second, if it is expected that the Director needs to be able to pick up what is going on in the lab in cyber, or forensics, or bio, and is expected to interact with senior customer leaders in those areas, they too will be looking for some badge of professional standing. Third, like it or not credentials matter with the military, congressional staff, and many others in DC. When the Director's are at hearings, you don't want the name tags to read Dr McMillan, Dr Hommert, and Mr/Ms X. Fourth, the Director is charged with sustaining and enhancing the S&T capabilities at llnl, and UC oversees that part. Having gone through the PhD procees, and perhaps a postdoc, is important to that, and will be viewed by UC that way. Fifth, even though LLNL is governed by an llc, there is a UC tradition of selecting lab directors with the same criteria they use for campus chancellors. Moving away from that is just another break in the chain. Finally, LLNL is the lab of Teller and Lawrence, and LANL the lab of Oppenheimer and Bethe and Fermi. At Llnl, Nuckols was an anomaly, had done plenty of phd-quality work, and was blessed by Teller.
Adam Rowen (manager of the Materials Chemistry department) from Sandia National Laboratories does not have a Ph.D.
Three Vice Presidents of technical divisions at Sandia National Laboratories do not have a Ph.D.: Hruby, Walker, Vahle. To my knowledge, these are the first ever Vice Presidents without a Ph.D. in Science or Engineering to lead techical divisions at Sandia.
The PhD stuff is really getting old. Can you guys just get over your penis envy for a while? The issue is so insidiously tied up with professional envy and class structure that no good can come from this debate. You are all just succeeding in making yourselves look petty and stupid. Get over yourselves, please.
Lets analyze whether Phds are worthwhile at the labs. Fact: LANL
has had the most problems of the labs. Fact2: LLNL has had the second most problems of the labs. Fact3 Sandia has had the least problems of the lab. Fact4 Sandia has the leas percentage of Ph.ds. You do the math. So it seems that Ph.ds are only liabilities at the labs. Besides not being very smart they have a tendency to be very arrogant and problematic. Lets just get of the lot and be done with with. The labs will have fewer problems, cheaper, and best of all they will be much more pleasant. It is a win win. Besides if you look at any typical private sector workplace they do have all these Ph.ds running around. Private is always better and this is what we should strive for. How many Ph.ds did it take the build the Hoover dam? How many Ph.ds to make Microsoft? How many Ph.ds to make Google...you see where I am going with this. If we want to make the labs succeed we need to be more like a company and good companies do not have that many Phds. Get with the program people.
LANL by a large margin has had the most problems of the labs. It is very debatable whether SNL or LLNL come in #2, and in either case it would take a log plot to show them on the same page as LANL. I'd say SNL has had more problems than LLNL, at least in the past decade. So I don't think the correlation proposed is valid (if it ever was). Most of the points made by the earlier poster have more to do with appearance than capability, but the appearance points are pretty good.
Yes, SNL has definitely had more problems in the past, including the most notorious incident involving a mismanagement of national security:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Carpenter
...in addition to the more recent findings of improper funding to politicians and penalizations from the federal government
http://www.nukewatch.org/watchblog/?p=1499
Th phd issue is really just a red herring because it has more to do with optics, presentation and expectations. And nothing to do with intelligence or ability to manage. Many parts of that lab are cesspools of mediocrity not because there are managers here and there without PhDs but rather because the environment coddles the mediocre and drives out the performers. We really need to point out the right reasons for why national labs like Sandia are wasteful money pits that are pissing away our tax money just to keep the mediocrity employed. We all know that most of them could never survive in the private sector. The same goes for parts of LANL and LLNL. The same problems for the same reasons.
If you have a Phd but you cannot demonstrate exceptional performance to justify a higher salary requirement, any private sector company is going to let you go. The low bar at national labs is why so many PhDs want to go work there, particular the mediocre PhDs. You can get a great salary doing almost nothing. You don't have to worry about sticking your neck out by performing if you're not the cream of the crop to begin with. You can take 5x longer on problems than if you were in a competitive environment. And if you're mediocre and stupid, you can use office politics to harass and easily drive out those that make you look like a complete moron by them performing and getting work done. This is the national lab model in a nutshell.
"January 17, 2014 at 2:46 AM"
Interesting rant, however do you have a shred of evidence to back any of it up? I suspect not.
I know a number of people over the years who have a Ph.d who have left for faculty positions, high-tech industry and other DOE labs such as Argonne, NIST and so on and have done very well. These where certainly not mediocre people. I also know many people who have moved to the labs from academic positions, high tech industry, and other DOE labs and they are very good and hard working people. Also I know that labs have have postdoctoral programs such as Directors Fellows and so on and the people that come through this are exceptional. Another tidbit is that the scientific publication record at least at LANL is the highest in the any of DOE complex, and Livermore and Sandia are up there. This seems to strong evidence against your point.
A more likely explanation for your rant is that you are a mediocre ex-lab employee who was fired due to incompetence and now you are projecting your anger to the world and saying complete utter nonsense. You are a very sad and bitter person of the same rank as our fried POS or you will end up like POS. The world does not owe you anything and pretending it does will not help you. Let go of your hatred because it is not hate of the world it is actually a form of self-hatred.
I really pray that its not Knapp. He's been basically the "invisible" director since being named acting LLNL by UC. I bet most employees couldn't pick him out of a police lineup.
Amusing, asking for "evidence" of what is already self-evident and pointing to publications as if they are an accomplishment rather than an ego-stroke within an old-boy network. Most of the scientists at the labs would be eaten alive and have their bones spit out in a competetive environment. And many of the stars are simply the best at playing the only game they know how to play.
I believe LLNL publications exceed LANL. And anyone who thinks pubs are "an ego stroke from an old boy network" has obviously not been through the process of doing original work and getting it published.
Hundreds of times, and I am old and do not care anymore, so I can speak the truth. It is a corrupt self-serving system.
January 16, 2014 at 7:25 PM
Go back and read your post (rant). You are not even able to construct a coherent sentence to say what you really mean, let alone make a coherent argument for your view. So you are obviously uneducated and think that you are qualified to judge the effectiveness and competence of people who actually chose to stay in school and learn something? Anyone who can speak and write coherently and convincingly can succeed at a very high level, regardless of the field of his/her education, and without the need for a PhD.
You might want to consider that the reason that the companies you mention don't have "PhDs running around" is that they never do fundamental research, but succeed based on the application and exploitation of results from PhDs at universities and government laboratories.
"I believe LLNL publications exceed LANL. And anyone who thinks pubs are "an ego stroke from an old boy network" has obviously not been through the process of doing original work and getting it published.
January 17, 2014 at 1:48 PM"
I agree with you point however I am pretty sure LANL has about 2.5 times more publications that LLNL and about 4 times than Sandia. I have seen this graph several times and if you go to Phys Rev this seems to be true as well. LANL was the very top in all of the DOE labs but I think in the last five years Oak Ridge may be higher.
"Hundreds of times, and I am old and do not care anymore, so I can speak the truth. It is a corrupt self-serving system.
January 17, 2014 at 7:32 PM"
Being old and not caring does not mean you speak the truth. It may mean you no longer care about the truth or are too old to change and face the truth. Your rant is not about the labs it is about yourself. Anyone can say I am old and speak the truth and say the moon is made out of cheese since it is self serving. 5:25AM gave very good arguments to why your rant is incorrect and you have not provided any arguments to refute this other than saying you do not care.
"You might want to consider that the reason that the companies you mention don't have "PhDs running around" is that they never do fundamental research, but succeed based on the application and exploitation of results from PhDs at universities and government laboratories.
January 17, 2014 at 8:53 PM"
Ha, only PhD would say something so utterly stupid. Did it take a PhD to invent the airplane, the car, the gun, the sword, farming, hunting? Did PhDs build the pyramids. Has a single PhD set foot on the moon? Has there ever been a president with a PhD? There I rest my case, and yes I can and just did judge. You know what really burns me is this chart I found where it said Phds earn about 35% more than people with a bachelors and 75% than people with a high school degree. This is a true disgrace for this country.
PhDs were behind the ill-fated deuterium EoS paper. Those PhDs never published a corrigendum nor did they retract the paper. All I need is one case to support my rant. I found it. Checkmate.
If you've never worked in industry, or closely with scientists in industry, you might think that all is stupidity outside the ivory tower (though incidentally academics look down their noses at national lab rats too). But the truth is there are really smart people everywhere, and some of the smartest are smart enough to follow the money and go where the opportunity is. And incidentally where most of the human beings are. They won't be working at microsoft or google, probably, but there are many high-tech companies (silicon valley, for example), or high-tech divisions of companies (oil industry for example), where you need a PhD, a highly-refined cerebrum, motivation and willingness to work long hours, and a personality in order to get past the secretary.
"Being old and not caring does not mean you speak the truth.
January 18, 2014 at 6:25 AM"
Oh it is truth, but the person writing what you call a "rant" is someone else. I bet someone without a PhD and a long list of publications could have figured that out, especially someone from Sandia. ;-)
This country is producing far too many PhDs particularly in the physical sciences. Moreover, we are producing far too many bad PhDs many of whom end up at the national labs. When they are stuck at a lab, unable to transition to academia or industry, many bad PhDs transform into bad managers as a way of "staying on top of the heap."
Jan 18, 6:20: last I looked #1 was ornl, #2 lbl, #3 LLNL. LANL was low, which was a surprise. There's probably something on the DOE website but I'll leave it to others to conform or refute.
"PhDs were behind the ill-fated deuterium EoS paper. Those PhDs never published a corrigendum nor did they retract the paper. All I need is one case to support my rant. I found it. Checkmate.
January 18, 2014 at 6:48 AM"
Touche my friend pure logic at its best. You see education destroys your ability to think. The poster lacks any kind of education and yet is a master of logic.
Has a single PhD set foot on the moon?
January 18, 2014 at 6:34 AM
Yes. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, PhD in geology, in 1972. Piloted the lunar module "Challenger." Do some research before you rant.
" This country is producing far too many PhDs particularly in the physical sciences. Moreover, we are producing far too many bad PhDs many of whom end up at the national labs. When they are stuck at a lab, unable to transition to academia or industry, many bad PhDs transform into bad managers as a way of "staying on top of the heap."
January 18, 2014 at 7:06 AM"
Sorry this does not hold water. You may say the country is producing far too many Phds, but in the physical science more than half are going to foreign nationals. As for you point that the Phds at labs are somehow of lower quality this does not seem to hold true. First of about half of the Phds in science leave the scientific field altogether after their Phds and in general the half that stay are the scientifically stronger. Second point the labs hire a significant number of Phds through the postdoc programs. There is an automatic weeding out at this point since Phds have to compete for with each other for such positions. The labs pay very well so the competition can be steep. "When they are stuck at a lab, unable to transition to academia or industry" This point makes no sense. The labs are much better than many academic and industrial positions so many people will not want to transition out so they are not "stuck" in the lab. The people that I know who have left for academic positions have left for rather high level schools or distinguished positions, I know many who turned down offers from academic and industrial positions to stay in the labs. Your idea that people are "stuck" at the labs is absolutely ludicrous. On the old LANL blog in 2005 crazy posters would say "anybody who could leave" has left. Yet every single after this statement people left for academic and industrial jobs and new people joined for academic and industrial jobs. You are either out of touch, out of your mind or both. You keep posting on here but you never provide evidence, facts, or data. If you like we can go through the names, the places that the people went or came from. This was done on the LANL blog as well.
A simpler explanation could be that you are simply a sad bitter POS who spews out nonsense. Go crawl back under your rock and leave the world alone and everyone will win.
One cannot argue with a lab lifer. They tend to perpetuate the very stereotypes that they are blind to, but that others see easily. Especially others from Sandia, the shining star of the national laboratory complex.
"January 18, 2014 at 8:58 AM"
Screw all you people. I hate the labs, I hate people who earn Phds. In fact I hate anyone who accomplishes anything with their lives. To tell the truth I hate the world. You took everything from me but in truth I had nothing. The world made me look at myself for what I am and for that I hate the world everyone in it. Bitterness is all I have to cling to and I will not let it go and to the very last I will try to make the world a worse place.
"One cannot argue with a lab lifer. They tend to perpetuate the very stereotypes that they are blind to, but that others see easily. Especially others from Sandia, the shining star of the national laboratory complex.
January 18, 2014 at 9:37 AM"
First of all I think there are not that many lab lifers as a large fraction of the people at the labs move to other places and only spend part of their career at the labs. Second the previous poster have very strong arguments that what you where saying about the labs is wrong. You never seem to have a counter point with any kind substance. I think your hatred has blinded you to the facts.
A comment on the PhD arguments. We all know that grade inflation severely set in nationwide for all degrees during the Vietnam war. We still have not in any way recovered from that. As a result, the diplomas are worth the paper they are printed on but not much more. At Harvard up until a few yeard ago only A's and B's were given out because Harvard students are the cream of the crop and you do not give C's to the cream of the crop. Also Daddy is paying big bucks to send his kid to Harvard and he wants that piece of paper for the money. After all if the kid does not do well, it is the result of poor teaching. Harvard recently is claiming they will tighten their standards. We will see. My comment applies not just to Harvard but to the vast majority of schools nationwide. I got my BS in 1966 and I have a PhD. I went through the system.
(1) "...in the physical science more than half are going to foreign nationals." There was no evidence presented for this, and even if it is true, most foreign nationals who get Ph.D.s in the US will probably stay in the US.
(2) "There is an automatic weeding out at this point since Phds have to compete for with each other for such positions. The labs pay very well so the competition can be steep." I have hired and tried to hire many postdocs and staff in several places, and the truth is there are not many really good people out there applying for lab jobs, despite the pay. In fact most are third rate, and you count yourself very lucky to score a good hire. The best don't come here, because the lab is a mediocre place for a postdoc (back-stabbling, unpublishable "programmatic" work, and/or classified topics), and it is only good for a staff job if you plan to become a "lifer" and learn to become a liar and a backstabber like so many of the rest.
(3) ""When they are stuck at a lab, unable to transition to academia or industry" This point makes no sense." It does when you realize that the labs are unique sheltered places, detached from reality in so many ways. Look up and down your hallway, many of your colleagues are sociopaths who need an extensive and expensive infrastructure to support them before they can become even moderately productive. Pluck them out, and most will sink, excepting some of the more entrepreneurial types in a few places like GS. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions. And if your office is in a place like B program, nearly all your colleagues are unemployable anywhere else.
Yah deuterium EoS is a great example here. Sandia and LANL have plenty of cases of abuse and intellectual and ethical decay. Don't get me wrong. This is not just about LLNL. Just think about how laughable is the statement that "national lab employees are Crown Jewels of this country." The need of such beliefs to "justify one's own value and existence" is truly sad. As a whole, the national labs are mediocre with much dead weight unable to deliver or perform at a high level that would justify much a "crown jewel" description. In reality, the labs are just typical of big organizations. The difference between the labs and healthy large organizations is that the labs have no self-correcting mechanism to throw out the trash. Deuterium EoS was not corrected. In fact the authors were continuously rewarded and promoted long after it blew up in their faces, while others were blackballed for shedding light on the matter. Real "crown jewel" culture? Absolutely not.
January 18, 2014 at 1:11 PM
(2) " I have hired and tried to hire many postdocs and staff in several places, and the truth is there
are not many really good people out there applying for lab jobs."
Sorry I am calling total BS on this there is no way in hell you have ever hired postdocs at one of the labs or anywhere else.
If you had you would know just how utterly untrue what you just said was. There are a huge amount of people
applying for the postdocs at the labs and they are considered some of the most desirable postocs positions in
in the United States. The competition is indeed fierce for these positions and I know at LANL the Directors postdoc
programs have hundreds of applicants for a very limited number slots and for the higher level prestigious postdoctoral fellows you
need to have an extraordinary scientific record. Every cycle there is a significant number of people who turn down
postdoc offers from other top places to accept postdoc positions the labs.
Some of the postdocs convert and stay at the labs and others get faculty or other
lab positions. I an can only speak for my lab but every year there are postdocs or staff who where postdocs who received faculty positions
at very strong institutes and just from my division this includes MIT, Princeton, Chicago, Texas, Colorado,
UCI, Minessota, North Carolina, Maryland, U of Washington, Illinois, Purdue, Penn Stat, Arizona, Wash University, Indian University,
UCSD, UCD, Ohio State, Oregon,
Notre Dame, Tufts, SMU, Tulane, Toronto, Cornell, Duke, UCSB. This is also not mention the number postdocs who had very nice faculty
offers and chose to stay the labs.
There are also a number of posdocs who when they leave the lab
go on to a second postodc at other high level intuitions such as Harvard, Caltech...ect.
This argument that LLNL, LANL, or Sandia have poor quality postdocs is just complete nonsense is is completely contradicted by
the placement record. If you really worked with postdocs at the labs you know this. You are simply a liar. What exactly is your problem?
I'll never be in a position to recommend a person for the position of LLNS Director but I am in a position to hope that the person chosen has the strength of character to fight for and premote The Labs as the national treasures of science engineering and innovation that they used to be and somewhat still are.
6:34AM "Has there ever been a president with a PhD?"
Woodrow Wilson.
7:45AM "last I looked #1 was ornl, #2 lbl, #3 LLNL. LANL was low, which was a surprise."
Where did you look? The graphs I've seen thrown around also show LANL leading all labs, and searching all 2013 publications shows 3118 with "Los Alamos" in the address, and 1661 with "Livermore" - including SNL-CA.
"January 18, 2014 at 3:02 PM
blah"
Ah, that is laughable and I'll call BS on you calling BS. Yes, the Lawrence Fellowship at LLNL attracts some good candidates, but that is one job. The mundane fellowships offered to the less celestial attract mostly 3rd-rate candidates, and I cannot think of a really strong post-doc in years. All the resumes I see look reasonable on paper, but when you bring them in for an interview your find they are mostly 3rd-rate. Not sure what isolated planet you live on, but that's the way it is at least in high energy density sciences. Teller would not have hired any of them.
Ah, that is laughable and I'll call BS on you calling BS. Yes, the Lawrence Fellowship at LLNL attracts some good candidates, but that is one job. The mundane fellowships offered to the less celestial attract mostly 3rd-rate candidates, and I cannot think of "a really strong post-doc in years. All the resumes I see look reasonable on paper, but when you bring them in for an interview your find they are mostly 3rd-rate. Not sure what isolated planet you live on, but that's the way it is at least in high energy density sciences. Teller would not have hired any of them.
January 18, 2014 at 5:32 PM"
BS you do not work at at lab or ever did. Judging the all the jobs and quality of jobs the postdocs are getting there are a tremendous amount of very strong postdocs. You keep having you ass handed to you time and time again. By the way you seem to never address the issue about why you are such a bitter POS. Could you please fill us in. Did a someone with a Phd steal you wife or boyfriend? Come on there is more to your story, you have some ax to grind and dam the truth. Let hear it let the blog be you confession point.
3rd rate people do not understand the difference between 3rd rate and 1st rate. That seems to be the problem here. When your eye level is a foot off the ground, the world looks different.
" 6:34AM "Has there ever been a president with a PhD?"
Woodrow Wilson."
Dammit ok I will give you that but the war is not over!
I dare say there has never been an astronaut with a Phd.
"3rd rate people do not understand the difference between 3rd rate and 1st rate. That seems to be the problem here. When your eye level is a foot off the ground, the world looks different.
January 18, 2014 at 5:45 PM"
Wow way to refute the facts that given. Pure logic.
The real problem here is that
POS sees only what he wants to see and does not care about the truth.
"I dare say there has never been an astronaut with a Phd."
Good one - a couple of whom were also former LANL staff members, and one (Phillips) an Oppenheimer Fellow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Pettit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Phillips
The original ranter should have stopped at the pyramids, he was right about that one at least.
Harrison Schmitt, PhD geologist. Apollo 17.
I dare say there has never been an astronaut with a Phd.
January 18, 2014 at 5:51 PM
You are wrong in several instances, as noted by January 18, 2014 at 7:47 PM. You might also want to check out an earlier post and reply:
Anonymous said...
Has a single PhD set foot on the moon?
January 18, 2014 at 6:34 AM
Yes. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, PhD in geology, in 1972. Piloted the lunar module "Challenger." Do some research before you rant.
January 18, 2014 at 8:45 AM
The issue is not the competitiveness in getting a position, but the competitiveness in keeping the position and the lack of any mechanism to remove the mediocre. The inability to remove mediocre PhDs prevents opening spots for promising ones. Really two sides of the same coin.
A-students leave when he or she knows his fate and performance is dictated by mediocre b and c students. The lack of a garbage disposal mechanism is a problem compounded when rainmakers and creative and productive employees leave instead or are forced out. When that organization decides that that it s better off without the A-students, then you know you are at a national lab. When your remaining mediocre performers are sipping the cool aid or revert to the "atleast this job pays decently, so my life is good" excuse, something is wrong. National labs are supposed to be the best of the best. Not the barnyard monstrosities that they have become. LLNL, LANL and Sandia are the worst offenders of organizational culture decay.
Moooooooo. Baaaaaaaaa.
Thinking back, just about every post-doc who comes to the lab gets offered a job after a couple years. I can think of a few exceptions in ten years, but it is the same problem: The best people don't come to work at the lab, so you accept the B- and C-team players, and you have to keep them around or else you have no one. And then they stick around forever and eventually become managers. Great recipe for decay.
"LLNL, LANL and Sandia are the worst offenders of organizational culture decay.
January 19, 2014 at 3:18 AM"
Can you please provide some evidence for this? The statistical data and placement record points to the opposite.
We should dub you "Z" for zealot. That would be a good signature line.
Holy S++t! Someone with fourth grade writing skills railing against higher education has hijacked a thread about the search for the director of a National Laboratory? Does anyone have real news about the original topic?
Also all this talk about "papers" being some kind of measure of the labs is just pathetic. Do you think the original Manhattan team members ever published papers? Hell no they did however deliver what they where suppose to deliver.
January 19, 2014 at 7:51 AM
You really have no idea how science works. And apparently you don't realize that the Manhattan Project was classified in its entirety until after the war and it was only much later that classified venues for scientists to publish peer-reviewed articles were established. You think Fermi, Feynman, Morrison, Bethe, Bohr, von Neumann, and the rest never published any papers?? Your stupidity is only exceeded by your ignorance.
"January 19, 2014 at 10:57 AM"
Signed, Z.
The dude who asks for statistical evidence of what is based in empirical observation is a real weirdo. How do you measure organizational culture decay? What are the metrics? How do you measure dishonesty and duplicity in individual action? You can't say that an inference is false because statistical measurements don't exist. How did you pass the analytical section of he GRE? You might consider taking a refresher, sir.
Mr. "Gimme Statistical Evidence" has a PhD but couldn't see through his own illogic. Makes you wonder about these PhDs at the national labs....
This country is producing far too many PhDs particularly in the physical sciences. Moreover, we are producing far too many bad PhDs many of whom end up at the national labs. When they are stuck at a lab, unable to transition to academia or industry, many bad PhDs transform into bad managers as a way of "staying on top of the heap."
January 18, 2014 at 7:06 AM
Hell, you don't need a PhD to transform into a bad manager. Bret Knapp transformed into a bad manager with just an M.S. degree and from a mediocre school. Yes, Cal Poly and UC Davis are mediocre schools.
Nya,nya,nya,nya; NYA,nya !
Indeed. Badness in lab organizational culture isn't predicated on having PhDs.
Blah, blah, blah ... PhD's ... blah, blah, blah ... NIF ... blah, blah, blah ... EOS ... blah, blah, blah ... Tomas ... blah, blah, blah ... chili cookoff ... blah, blah, blah ... Ed Moses ... blah, blah, blah ... liars ... blah, blah, blah
Does LLNL have someone officially tasked with tracking and participating in online blogosphere discourse?
You cannot measure cultural decay like you can count particles and photons. Even discussing a topic like that requires a different, non-physics-based frame of reference and a different language. Physicists are often uniquely ill-suited to discussions like that, and many simply don't understand that they are unable to wrap their heads around it. They cannot see it, and fall back on the only language they know, which is the wrong language. When these people become managers at national laboratories, watch out.
Thanks everybody.
I couldn't sleep and I was wondering how the director search was coming so I read through this thread.
When I got to "screw you all", I laughed out loud.
The thread presents like a South Park episode.
I can sleep now. Thanks for the amusement.
and po0r punctuac1ion.
Trey Parker are you posting on this blog? Scot Adams, how about you?
Surely Cartman or Dilbert can tidy up the discussion so far.
Are there any Ph.Ds on death row?
Did Theodore Stryleski ever earn his math degree?
Go Bears. Beat Stanford. No really. Beat Stanford.
I agree, this thread is entertaining! We put salt on the wound of the labs. Even a few over-the-top generalizations about those places. And the Labbies squirm and squeal right on queue, screaming bloody murder. The entertaining part is the oh-so-predictable vitriolic response.
And the Labbies squirm and squeal right on queue...
January 20, 2014 at 6:01 AM
Uh, "cue"? Unless they are standing in line and squirming.
"When I got to "screw you all", I laughed out loud.
January 20, 2014 at 3:07 AM"
I personally thought that calling BS on calling BS was pretty hilarious.
I call BS on you calling BS on the BS.
Hahaha. I love you all.
Fortunately, this thread will soon set below the blogorizon.
"Anonymous said...
I call BS on you calling BS on the BS.
January 20, 2014 at 11:48 AM"
Just to clarify, January 18, 2014 at 5:32 PM said:
"Ah, that is laughable and I'll call BS on you calling BS."
I thought that was just hilarious, because I imagined a zebra (referee) getting flagged by the other zebras for making a bad call. It should have happened several times yesterday.
"January 19, 2014 at 7:58 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said..."
This version is more relevant to
the troll at hand.
I understand that you cannot see you own psychosis. You cannot measure mental decay like you can count particles and photons. Even discussing a topic like that requires a rational, non-psychotic frame of reference and human language. The mentally ill are uniquely ill-suited to discussions like that, and many simply don't understand that they are unable to wrap their heads around it. They cannot see it, and fall back on the only language they know, which is irrational rants. Then these people become trolls on blogs attacking people who have Phds or work at national laboratories.
January 19, 2014 at 8:53 PM
"I dare say there has never been an astronaut with a Phd"
Tammy Jernigan and Jeff Wisoff, both Astronauts and Ph.Ds. at LLNL.
There is also at least one Ph.D. Astronaut at Sandia (just can't recall his name).
I think we get a lower quality job candidate at LLNL (in all expert areas) than LANL since there is no Stanford, UC Berkeley, or Silicon Valley in New Mexico. As the sole employer of MS and Ph.D. level people, LANL (and Sandia, Albe..) get a wider choice of candidates.
As the sole employer of MS and Ph.D. level people, LANL (and Sandia, Albe..) get a wider choice of candidates.
January 21, 2014 at 2:07 PM
Not quite the "sole" employers. Several units of KAFB, and several colleges and universities also employ MS's and PhD's in NM. Also tech companies such as Intel, Honeywell, CINT, Boeing, Ktech-Raytheon, etc.
Not quite the "sole" employers. Several units of KAFB, and several colleges and universities also employ MS's and PhD's in NM. Also tech companies such as Intel, Honeywell, CINT, Boeing, Ktech-Raytheon, etc.
January 21, 2014 at 3:11 PM"
Any Ph.d from New Mexico Tech, NMSU or U New Mexico who is not good enough to get a job at Intel, Honeywell, Raytheon or so on has
to get staff positions and Sandia and LANL, so ya mostley third rate. If you say I am wrong it is because you have a Phd and are culturally blind to this kind of thing. My arguments stand to reason and you zealots just refuse to see it. Man I am good.
You need to spell check your posts. d should be capitalized, U should have a period, you mixed singular and plural in the first sentence, ya is not a word, and mostley is mis-spelled.
A Ph.D.
Leave him alone; it's his "culture."
I don't think those industry positions are preferred by PhDs over the positions at the lab. At the defense contractors and high tech labs, you have to deliver. Lab LDRD is mainly lab welfare. What phd wouldn't want to get onto LDRD or get carried on a big project? If everyone is 10% on this LDRD and 15% on that project, you have essentially been given license to do little to nothing on any of those projects. You charge accounts for attending week meetings where you ramble on and on. You respond to every question by creating two new questions. Rinse and repeat for 40 years. Play a bit of office politics and you-scratch-my-back. And there you have it. You made it to retirement on a good salary having accomplished little in life. Most PhDs, even smart ones would go for this at the labs. Who wouldn't? Maybe the driven and motivated losers would pick Intel or Google or Raytheon over Sandia or LANL. White collar welfare is good. Just know that if you stay on it for too long, just pray to god you are never cast off that boat and forced out into a world where you actually have to deliver.
January 22, 2014 at 12:57 PM
You keep using the phrase "to deliver" as if no professional staff at the labs "deliver." First, who are you to judge? Second, by what criteria, except that staff keep their funding? Are you saying you know the specific deliverables that each staff member is held to? And that you know they are deficient? If you are that knowledgeable and powerful, why not just fire them? Or are you just a bystander in their professional lives, wishing you were there?
"don't think those industry positions are preferred by PhDs over the positions at the lab. At the defense contractors and high tech labs, you have to deliver. Lab LDRD is mainly lab welfare. What phd wouldn't want to get onto LDRD or get carried on a big project? If everyone is 10% on this LDRD and 15% "
Stand to perfect reason as always, expect that people on LDRD work huge numbers of hours and produce lots of work. And as you say everyone is on LDRD at 10% Expect 95% of the lab workforce is not on LDRD.
"You made it to retirement on a good salary having accomplished little in life. "
Yep expect for all those documented accomplished that the people at the labs have.
"White collar welfare is good. Just know that if you stay on it for too long, just pray to god you are never cast off that boat and forced out into a world where you actually have to deliver."
Yep except that this so called white color welfare does not exits at the labs, never existed at the labs, and never will exist at the labs. Oh and all those people who left the labs and leave every year for all those other "real world" jobs don't exist. All these people from academic and industry positions don't exist either. The only thing that is real and true is the voice inside the head "January 22, 2014 at 12:57 PM"
Hey 12:57 PM it is time to face reality baby. You are a bitter crazy loon. Of course you could be some enemy from abroad trying to make the labs look bad but they would use better arguments than you so crazy bitter POS loon is a safer bet. Of course you could give your name as it might give your arguments more weight however I would bet that will not since it will give you away as the "bitter batsh*t crazy guy they should have never hired. Hey I am just saying but prove me wrong and put you real name down. Inquiring minds want to know!
"You keep using the phrase "to deliver" as if no professional staff at the labs "deliver." First, who are you to judge? "
I am who I am, a blog poster, a God in my world.
"Second, by what criteria, except that staff keep their funding? Are you saying you know the specific deliverables that each staff member is held to?"
You are a zealot who refused to see the what is so blatantly obvious. I cannot give and will not give specifics but what I say is true because this is blog and can say whatever I want to. To deny what I say is to verify it. Checkmate.
"And that you know they are deficient? "
Of course they are deficient, they went to college, they have "knowledge", and in some of them have even obtained a Phd. In case you have not been following this thread of posts we have already established that anyone who obtained a Phd is worthless. Are you not paying attention?
"If you are that knowledgeable and powerful, why not just fire them?"
Oh if I could...but you see I was way to smart to work at place like LLNL. If I had I would soon be the Director and fire the lot of you. Life is unfair due to the idiots that do not recognize the Geniuses like me. Of course if you went to college you cannot understand this argument since you are uniquely unqualified understand such things. You must take my word on this you see.
"Or are you just a bystander in their professional lives, wishing you were there?"
OMG, you hit too close to home. Dam you to hell. I would never ever in million years ever ever want to work in a place like LLNL.
No no no...Uh em if by chance I have ever worked at LLNL I assure I was never fired for being incompetent or worthless and I might add you should not believe
a word of what any of my ex coworkers, family members, or any of the people in the called "mental health profession" might say about me.
Our meth smoker has been here too, it seems.
7:24 PM, few professional staff at LLNL "deliver", there are plenty of exceptions but if you had worked other places where there are expectations of performance at higher levels you would see that. Staff being funded and writing papers now and then are not useful metrics, because they don't generally source the funding and because any mediocre work written out of LLNL can get published "somewhere". And in many cases there are few formal deliverables, certainly none written anywhere, so how you are judged is up to your manager and his manager - it's all the office politics of the old boy network. Very dysfunctional with minimal accountability, covered up by half truths and dishonesty.
In case you have not been following this thread of posts we have already established that anyone who obtained a Phd is worthless. Are you not paying attention?
January 22, 2014 at 9:57 PM
Nope, it's only you. Or else all the other guys who agree with you write "Phd" instead of the correct "Ph.D." just like you do. Pathetic.
And in many cases there are few formal deliverables, certainly none written anywhere
January 23, 2014 at 7:49 AM
Never worked on a WFO project, have you?
He has never seen WFO. I bet he has been on LDRD welfare for much of his career at the labs.
WFO is a small, small part of the lab, with a very different culture. Really not even the lab, better to move all those people someplace else. If you want to fly solo, fly solo.
If you consider all the work that is "core weapons" which is most of wci and nif but not everything they do, that represents 60% of the lab. Everything else (the other 40%) is WFO, nonpro, and non-nnsa DOE. Those customers do care about deliverables and schedule. WFO alone is about 25% of the lab. All in all, hardly "small, small."
It's not negligible, but WFO is not a core competency of the lab. It has only grown in size because there is less money in the traditional business of the lab.
It's grown in size because there is a demand for the capabilities of the top DOE labs. A core competency of the lab is delivering cutting edge solutions to national security, with the very best people and infrastructure. Always been true. The three NNSA labs along with ORNL are at the very top of the heap of national security technical capabilities. The next tier down isn't close. DoD and the IC and the rest of the national security agencies know this, and are learning it more and more.
To say that wfo isn't a core competency is not a valid statement. A core competency is explosive science, or analytic chemistry, or lasers, or actinide science, etc etc. In many of these areas the Lab is second to none. To argue that the "core competency" is that these skills are only applied to NA10 is just wrong, and doesn't make sense as a statement.
Core mission would be a better statement. WFO won't sustain the lab, in fact may destroy it by leading people to believe it will sustain it and make decisions on that basis. This was clear at least 5 years ago from the Stimson report.
WFO won't sustain the lab,
January 23, 2014 at 8:10 PM
No one is claiming that it will. The claim was that there were no real deliverables for lab scientists. The answer that for WFO, there clearly are, is obviously correct. Maybe NNSA could take a lesson from other agencies.
But those other agencies will kill the lab. Their focus and interest is very narrow, they don't care about the rest of the lab or the culture that built it, and they sure don't want to pay for any of it. Recipe for continued decay into mediocrity and eventual collapse.
Not all money is equal at the labs. Programmatic block funding is the best color of money attracting the best talent. WFO attracts either people who only specialize in certain non-program areas, or are used to fill in shortfalls and therefore could be less stable and therefore is less desirable. Crada is the least desirable and labs will dump underfunded people into those projects.
If industry or government agencies approach a lab with crada/wfo funding and a problem to solve, but does not identify specific people for specific tasks and does not actively push its expectations onto the labs, the labs will see this funding as a "take the money and run" situation, putting underfunded and underqualified people on work that is going to end up failing. Sandia and LANL have this attitude of screwing over the customer in this way. I dont see WFO in many areas as being viable for the long term. The incompetents they put in charge of many of these programs will have to answer questioning into how they could not deliver on projects that consultancies in the private sector could easily perform. The fact that labs get so much WFO is largely due to mandates that require agencies to spend so much on ffrdcs. This kind of no-compete environment isn't going to hold for long. In the areas of information technology and data Analytics and cyber security, the private sector is eating the labs' collective lunch. It is just a matter of time before they pull that money out of the labs.
It is just a matter of time before they pull that money out of the labs.
January 24, 2014 at 7:45 AM
I.e., you are jealous that NNSA programmatic funding is shrinking and more and more uncertain, while other agencies' need for the labs' expertise continues to grow.
It is a fictitious temporary "need", driven in part by a welfare-for-weapons-labs attitude and a post-9/11 military/industrial complex based on fear. It cannot last, in fact it may not last beyond the current administration that is big on spending government dollars.
Booz, Accenture, IBM and many high techs eat the lunch of the labs in many of these big data problems.
The lab should stick to its core: weapons.
Booz, Accenture, IBM and many high techs eat the lunch of the labs in many of these big data problems.
The lab should stick to its core: weapons.
It's core is national security. The demand for the labs has little to do with "post-9/11". It has to do with a set of very hard and long standing problems that the commercial sector is I'll equipped to solve, and that the DoD and IC have figured out the labs can make headway with. And Booze and Accenture don't have a lot of tech talent, which is why the other agencies are ignoring their traditional contractors in many cases and going to the labs. The demand is there and will last. Whether they invest or not is the whole point to all the various commissions (Stimson, Perry-Schelsinger, etc). There are cases where they have (DHS bought the bio facility at llnl) but getting the lab governance to a place where many agencies feel they have a long term stake is where the focus needs to be for the new director and colleagues. Weapons? A core mission, but not the future.
I had to laugh at the last post. To say that Booz and Accenture don't have tech talent...
Booze and accenture are mainly program management shops. Some techs-booze does some nsa tech work-but they all rely a lot on subcontracting.
Even those subcontractors run circles around LLNL global security in terms of capability. It's hard to identify unique and mature capability outside of lasers and weapons at LLNL. So yeah they should stick to their strengths.
Give me a break. LLNL is excellent in network science, bioinformatics, analytic chemistry (and hence forensics), ... The list goes on in areas where the lab is at the cutting edge. you're right: I'd hire accenture over LLNL to put together and project manage a big IT system.thats about it. You really do not know what you're talking about.
The labs are far behind both the private sector and non-DOE labs in areas such as big data and additive manufacturing. So yes I do know exactly what I'm talking about.
Well no. Aside from the fact that LLNL has developed the world record strength to weight material (beating the previous record holder Hughes Research Lab) the LLNL additive manufacturing program is aimed at particular mission applications that are both hard and that others are not working. You are correct regarding big data --- but again the LLNL effort is application specific. The more important point is that LLNL is at the cutting edge in many areas other than "lasers and weapons", and the fact that they are not in every area is irrelevant. Llnl, for example, is not at the cutting edge in robotics, but that doesn't mean that therefore it should stick to weapons and lasers. No you do not know what you are talking about.
It is so typical for LLNL to proclaim that they a releases in fields outside their core competency. They aren't a great materials science and engineering lab. Though there are a few great people doing great work in various Niche areas for BES and various customers. But LLNL does not constitute a center of excellence for materials. It's only okay. So so. Mediocre. You are too quick to inflate the reputation of some of your noncore programs. At the same time you take very respectable programs and cannibilize or destroy them because they don't have the letters "NIF" in the program. You should take off your rosy colored glasses and see your lab for what it has become.
Big data efforts in the private sector are also application specific. And yet they eat your lunch.
Anything the private sector cares about (relates to the bottom line), it will do better than the lab. There are lots of smart people all over, and if you give them incentive (like, money, because it affects your bottom line), then they will come to the private sector and work harder than they will ever work at the lab. Where the lab excels is in areas that the private sector does *not* care about, or at least is unwilling to spend money on because of the cost and risk (fusion energy for example). There, the lab excels, but there's no competition so there's nothing to compare it to, except maybe some redundant effort at another national lab like LANL.
There are plenty of things in national security the private sector doesn't care about. Plenty. That fact is the reason why there are national labs and ffrdcs. Even in areas that the private sector cares about, they are almost never interested in long term efforts where the payoff is years away. Regarding big data: of course they are in application specific areas. Just not the same applications as those that lllnl is focused on. No government agency is going to invest in areas where the private sector is making big investments in. And they rarely do.
The top level point made in this subthread that LLNL should just stick to lasers and nukes is uninformed and dumb.
January 30, 2014 at 2:41 PM said...
"There are plenty of things in national security the private sector doesn't care about.. That fact is the reason why there are national labs..."
Sure, but I think there are two points. One, if the private sector did care about those things, they would smoke the national labs. It can be amazing to learn how much incredibly good work goes on in industry, things you never hear about because it's all proprietary. Two, it's very difficult to judge how well the labs really do on these things, because there's nothing to compare against, except maybe another lab.
These non-core programs are all a drain on LLNL resources. Unless they can be taxed heavily to support NIF and WCI, they should be shut down. Accept the fact that the lab has doubled and tripled down on NIF. All of you Ed haters hate him for making the hard but correct decision due to situations forced upon him. Getting rid of him doesn't change the situation. NIF should still be given priority to all LDRD. HEAF should be dismantled. BES programs should be applicable to NIF. Forget about trying to grow global securities into a fully mature program.
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