ANonymously contributed:
from LLNL Newsline...
Diaz de la Rubia stepping down as S&T deputy director
08/02/2012
Following a successful 23-year career as a scientist, senior manager and leader at the Laboratory, Dr. Tomas Diaz de la Rubia is stepping down from his post as Deputy Director for Science and Technology to pursue other opportunities.
He has agreed to remain with the Laboratory for a period of time to assist in the transfer of his duties and responsibilities.
"We wish to thank him for his years of dedicated service in the national interest," Lab Director Parney Albright said.
Comments
Personally, I think it was a shame that PLS took over CMS and most of the CMS managers were "scattered to the wind". We are fortunate, to have them as mid-level managers.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_21222452/livermore-lab-loses-two-key-leaders
Umm. Well, yeah that's great if your sole criterion for excellence is passing audits.
Umm. Well, yeah that's great if your sole criterion for excellence is passing audits.
August 2, 2012 11:40 PM
Isn't that the highest priority for LANL/LLNL? I've personally spent 80% of my time supporting DOE-IG, DOE-LAO, DNFSB, and GAO audits during the past year working at LANS Transuranic Operations. Government "gone wild"!
The truth is that this division continues to have managers for CMS who retaliated and harass good employees.
The truth is that this division continues to have managers who came from CMS who retaliated and harass good employees.
August 3, 2012 9:20 AM
The perfect example of this at LANS was Anastasio "protecting" Knapp's behavior of harassing and threatening LANL employees.
The loss of stature, becoming one of many S&T lackies, limited engineering's ability to enforce engineering discipline in Lab projects.
Tomas, raised in the inbred and myopic management of maintaining CMS prerogatives knew nothing, nor cared anything for maintaining separate excellence in the key engineering disciplines of mechanical and electrical engineering.
The three worst examples are that since S&T took all overhead ... engineering lacked even $1000 per person per year for training. In addition, the key development resource, first-line supervision was no longer paid for, so that leaders developing personnel needed to fit it in on their projects budgets rather than supervising and developing as a supported activity. Naturally it waned and was faked. Finally the key tech base projects went unsupported, so that research areas interesting to both engineering and key young researchers were not available to recruit retain and develop.
All mistakes, all proven techniques for keeping LLNL Engineering relevant, well-staffed and excellent.
The departure of Tomas and hopefully, the closure of the irrelevant S&T glutton, should be cheered by all LLNL engineers and all who like previous LLNL directors, Anastasio, Mara, Nuckolls, Emmett, Hausmann and Moses highly value an strong talented independent and dedicated Enginnering Directorate.
Engineering Alumni
Managing outside of your discipline is a challenge for all. The key is relinquishing control of the things you do not understand, not increasing it.
The departure of Tomas and hopefully, the closure of the irrelevant S&T glutton, should be cheered by all LLNL engineers and all who like previous LLNL directors, Anastasio, Mara, Nuckolls, Emmett, Hausmann and Moses highly value an strong talented independent and dedicated Enginnering Directorate.
Engineering Alumni
August 3, 2012 10:41 PM
Engineering is unfortunately a "support" function at LLNL/LANL. This is particularly this case when the "Big Three (Anastasio, McMillan, Knapp)" came to LANL. They immediately began transferring Weapon Engineers and other highly skilled engineers/scientists to the facilities (TA-55, Waste, CMR) to mop floors. They consider engineering a service organization ensuring the bathroom fans operate and toilets are flushing (particularly in the NSSB) . Go to Sandia if you want to perform real Engineering.
Or there is still plenty of real engineering at the physics labs, both in traditional weapons program and expanding WFO. We just haven't figured out how to add (pad?) another digit to the budgets.
Until the S&T reorg at LLNL, about 3 years ago, Engineering reported directly the LLNL Director, and was and still is responsible for the safety, success and excellence of all Engineered activities at LLNL. The difference under Tomas is that he did not value the contribution enough to keep key sustaining activities adequately funded, he had other objectives.
LANLs engineering according to the 6-8 senior engineers that I have spoke to that have been employed at both sites for long periods, the treatment of engineering is very different at the two locations.
It is different again at Sandia, whose job is the management of the engineering relationships of the physics package and the rest of the system. This is a completely different mission than assuring that properly experienced technical personnel execute the engineered aspects of complex small and large scale R&D projects with proper rigor, safety and discipline.
Sandia engineers generally do not wish to work on lab projects and LLNL engineers at least, generally do not want to work on the type of development projects sandia supports. There are exceptions, but the work and rewards are somewhat different.
August 4, 2012 7:55 PM
I find it interesting that Sharon Stover does not use her husband's name. I guess I don't blame her.
Wow, that is a damnable indictment. Oops.
Anyways, its not just the managements' use of profanity that's bad, but rather, its use in conjunction with telling people to get out of "their spot" in conference rooms, that's the true indictment! Get it right!!
For example, this isn't just a story about Tomas cheating on his wife (a theme that is so human and all too common), but it's also a story about a man falling in love with a young beautiful woman. You know it was love at first sight when their eyes accidentally met each other across the large conference room where Ed Moses had just told someone to GTFO of his spot. But all the confusion and chaos seemed to have faded away as these two lovestruck nerds continued to bewitch each other, unable to disrupt their gazes towards each other.
And it was fate, they both knew it, that brought them together, for they both heard in their heads the same love ballad, while they were in their mutual dream state where the people shuffling around in the conference room seemed to be thousands of miles away, their voices muted.
Don't you want to know how we keep starting fires?
It's my desire, It's my desire, It's my desire
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, When we kiss
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, when we kiss
When we touch, when we kiss
Fire in the disco
Fire in the disco
Fire in the taco bell
Fire in the disco
Fire in the disco
Fire in the gates of Hell
The voices kept singing over and over in their heads, for what seemed like an eternity.
This is true love. Love at first sight.
"A Los Alamos scientist claims her boss kept her as a sex slave; he says she was a willing participant."
Just in case alone was wondering if the culture has changed over time.
Tomas doesn't even come close to Hal. Tomas does not have the mental and emotional discipline to be on any executive management team.
>emotional discipline to be on
>any executive management team.
He did a bang-up job on PowerPoints, and isn't that about the most important job of LLNL's senior managers? Or is it updating the "We Value" poster?