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Friday, February 3, 2017

Sandia: BOHIC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIlnYGQ0gYk&feature=youtu.be

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a friendly guy. He's like the happy uncle you wish you always had. Wish a personality so jovial and down to earth, how could you possibly say no to a massive benefits cut??

Anonymous said...



I like how he says Sandia is the premier engineering lab in the complex. Upper management at LANL keep saying that LANL is or will be an engineering lab. I guess the plan is to make LANL Sanida east or something. The other rumor I keep hearing is that the plan is to make Sandia a more science oriented lab since science only creates cultural problems at LANL. These seems to fly in the face of what Younger just said so maybe all this is just wishful thinking of LANL higher ups.

Younger certainly comes across way more competent than Charlie McMillan but I have to admit that you cannot read much into a three minute video. I don't think there will be massive benefit cuts but I would speculate that some things will be reduced since that seems to be the case every time there is management change.

Anonymous said...


'Younger certainly comes across way more competent than Charlie McMillan'


So what? That compliment puts Younger in the same category as all the other Directors over the decades. McMillan comes across as the least competent one. Ever.

Anonymous said...

"Upper management at LANL keep saying that LANL is or will be an engineering lab. I guess the plan is to make LANL Sanida east or something. "

Sounds like more of an aspirational goal. This is the "there is more money in applied R&D" strategy. The theory being that basic research dollars are shrinking while heavily applied R&D and engineering projects are more stable.

While it may seem this way, it's no party over at SNL either. Even the WFO DoD contract work peaked around 2006 and has seen pretty substantial declines. Some of the new projects literally involve reproducing commercially available products to skirt DoD procurement requirements.

The moral of the story is, be careful what you wish for. You can sell out and end up with something that, in the end, is no better money wise, and leads to horrible quality of work.

What LANL needs to do is simple but challenging. They need to hire the best people, like they were able to do in the 1940s-1980s, and generate scientific progress that is so compelling that the government is forced to fund it. This is the high road. Management prefers the low risk, low reward approach of racing to the bottom.

Anonymous said...

Just because the management destroyed science at LANL doesn't turn it into a premier engineering lab.

Anonymous said...

"Upper management at LANL keep saying that LANL is or will be an engineering lab."

I have never heard this. Who said it? When? Where? Citation? Oh right, you made it up again.

So much BS on this blog. Keep it up, you are not helping anybody.

Anonymous said...

I have never heard this. Who said it? When? Where? Citation? Oh right, you made it up again.

February 6, 2017 at 5:15 AM

This blog, like most, is an online conversation, not a scientific journal. Do you ask everyone you talk with to provide a "citation" for everything they say? You must be the life of every party, except that after the first, you probably don't get invited again.

Anonymous said...

Saying "Upper management at LANL keep saying that LANL is or will be an engineering lab." is more than an idle comment. You imply it has been repeated and is a goal of the lab. So put up or shut up.

Anonymous said...

February 6, 2017 at 6:40 PM

I am February 6, 2017 at 9:36 AM, not the earlier poster. The statement in question cannot be true unless very many of LANL employees have heard it too ("keep saying"). Give the poster a break. If there were widespread knowledge of these purported statements, he need not prove it to you. If not, he also need not prove it to you because the claim cannot be true. Study logic at all?

Anonymous said...

Look, LANL isn't becoming an engineering lab and SNL isn't becoming a science lab. The statement is patently absurd on its face. Consider that the NNSA just put Honeywell, probably the worst government contractor with the poorest record in science and innovation in the entire country, in charge of SNL. I think actions speak for themselves.

Anonymous said...

Saying "Upper management at LANL keep saying that LANL is or will be an engineering lab." is more than an idle comment. You imply it has been repeated and is a goal of the lab. So put up or shut up.

February 6, 2017 at 6:40 PM

Do you work at LANL? If so what directorate are you in because this has been said by numerous managers from AD level to group leaders from some time now with argument that this is where the money is. Be honest on this do you actually work at LANL?

Ok, if you do work at LANL all you have to do is look look at how LDRD has changed over the last several years and the wording that is now being used. LDRD has a number of new engineering categories, and the so called non-engineering categories now heavily use engineering terms like "field ready" "forward deployment", "going to the market place", "moving product", "delivery to the market place", "customers", "clients" and "disruptive technology" and "TRL, technology readiness level". This along with the many comments made by numerous managers and even ADs.

Just for context, after LANS took over the watchword was "we need to be like LLNL". This has slowly been changing into we need to be like "Sandia" or "Pantex".

Anonymous said...

Why stop at Sandia or Pantex? Might as well go the full monty and strive to be like Hanford or Rocky Flats.

Anonymous said...

"Look, LANL isn't becoming an engineering lab and SNL isn't becoming a science lab. The statement is patently absurd"

Correct.

Anonymous said...

"Look, LANL isn't becoming an engineering lab and SNL isn't becoming a science lab. The statement is patently absurd"

How so? It seems to go against what people are saying. Also just look at the new team
at Sandia, Younger is scientist not an engineer, similarly with Seestrom.

Again if you actually work at LANL than you would be hearing this. Where do you work?

Anonymous said...

I work for Trump. I am Rick Perry, your boss.

Anonymous said...

Take your meds, 7:59 AM. You're severely mentally ill.

Anonymous said...

February 7, 2017 at 11:11 AM

Complete lack of a sense of sarcasm or humor is one of the primary symptoms of TDS. Get help.

Anonymous said...

"Upper management at LANL keep saying that LANL is or will be an engineering lab."

So AET Division is taking over? I thought they were small in size.

Anonymous said...

So AET Division is taking over? I thought they were small in size.

February 7, 2017 at 6:09 PM

No AET is not taking over, but whole directorates and heads of directorates are saying
we need to be engineering lab in order to compete with the global marketplace. We need to be cheaper, faster, and deliver field tech to paying costumers.

Anonymous said...

I never worked on LANL, but what February 7, 2017 at 9:18 PM is saying makes sense. It stands to reason that as budgets get cut, the basic research goes first, and the gov't continues to fund only the more near term work that private contractors, SBIRs and industry should be doing.

But what's the point of doing this low value work at LANL, just to keep the lights on? Might as well just let he lab shrink and continue doing good work. LANL isn't a publicly traded corporation. There is no reason why they need to compromise the quality of their work just to pay dividends to investors or keep their share price up.

Anonymous said...

5:24 PM. Listen up, Snowflake, falsely claiming to be Rick Perry isn't funny. In fact, nothing you write is funny. Nothing you have ever written is clever. You're deluded. Take your meds.

Anonymous said...

February 7 at 9:18 PM and February 8 at 7:34 AM are spot on. A lot of very bad strategic decisions have been made over the last twenty years and much of what made LANL a National Lab has been destroyed. All the while the management has been justifying their actions with the rhetoric about "customers", "deliverables", "follow the money", or some such nonsense. They've been playing free-market entrepreneurs with taxpayer money, or at least pretending to. Guess what, free-market geniuses? The high-value, unique science and engineering expertise is gone and Walmart is still more efficient, and always will be. The stupidity of these people is criminal.

Anonymous said...

February 8, 2017 at 8:16 AM:

Wow, this is a prime example of what long term sex deprivation can do to a man. Somebody cracks a joke about being the Secretary of Energy and it causes you to go ballistic??

Anonymous said...

Wow, this is a prime example of what long term sex deprivation can do to a man.

February 8, 2017 at 9:06 PM

No need to invoke such outlandish causes. It is simple acute TDS.

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