Anonymous asked:
1) Why did you leave LLNL?
2) Why are you staying?
3) Are you better off?
1) Why did you leave LLNL?
2) Why are you staying?
3) Are you better off?
Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
Comments
And that is why I'm moving on. After 3 years as a staff scientist I have grown tired of the politics, tired of the struggle against our own management to bring funding into the lab, and tired of how ineffectual EVERYONE has become as the daily gossip and talk of re-orgs and other pointless management exercises has taken over completely from the excitement over just getting the science done that apparently existed here 5-10 years ago. Since I've been offered a great position in industry, which I might well have taken even if there weren't so many problems at LLNS, I'm moving on to accelerate my career in a way that has become impossible for young scientists here at the lab. It's a position with more responsibility and a higher salary.
So many good scientists have left or are leaving at the moment actually that soon there won't be any good science happening at LLNL and my first point about postdocs will not be true.
I won't start my new position for another month but I'll be sure to come back here and post something about the differences once I've had time to absorb them. Could be 6 months to give an accurate assessment, I suppose. I don't expect completely green grass over on the other side!
Am I happy I left, yes and no. I am happy that I am, for all intents and purposes, my own boss and my schedule is my own (apart from 3 hours/week when I teach). No more of this 'hero' BS where if ou were the fovorite of the managers you moved places regardless of performance or value.
The flip side is I liked the work I did. Just did not like the politics and what I perceived as, unfair merit raises..
Someone mentioned his/her division manager treated people like robots.
That person is right!
Time for the S&T PAD head to take a closer look and see for themselves!