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
POS
November 14, 2013 at 12:02 PM
It is also perfect if your objective is to avoid rewarding poor performance.
Of course it works, but it depends on your objective! If it is to hold down the people you dislike it's perfect.
November 14, 2013 at 12:02 PM
You really don't get it. Ranking, for better or worse, involves multiple supervisors, so there is at least some sharing of information and "normalization" of individual supervisors' viewpoints.
When you stop ranking, you just make it easier for individual supervisors to arbitrarily "do whatever they want". You've removed one opportunity to control bad supervisorial behavior.
You may not like ranking, but it's better than most or all alternatives.
November 15, 2013 at 12:17 PM
Absolutely correct. I don't know how the "no ranking" people would propose to allocate raise and bonus money among a group of employees. Maybe they think all employees contribute equally, or maybe they're afraid to point out the (well known) dead wood in their organizations. It seem obvious, probably even to the "no rankers," that just leaving it up to the supervisors without any oversight or accountability would be really stupid.
You are also correct that the current system involves multiple supervisors, and also involves significant negotiation and even serious disagreements among supervisors. Not all supervisors are bad, and not all employees are good. It is clearly good for the organization to avoid rewarding bad employees, even if those employees happen to be supervisors.
Poor performers are the ones that tend to hang on, complain about unfair rankings and salaries, moan about how their great intellects and contributions aren't recognized by their supervisors who just want to hold them down, and want to join unions to protect their (actual) mediocrity.
That's been my observation over years of performance appraisals and ranking sessions at LLNL, on both sides of the process.
November 16, 2013 at 11:35 AM
News flash: Supervisors are always "doing ranking." Appraisal time isn't the first time all year they've thought about who are the best and worst performers. It's what supervisors are supposed to do.
I suppose you think the supervisors are writing the employee appraisals.
November 17, 2013 at 6:07 PM
As a former supervisor, I always wrote the appraisals for my employees, and nobody ever reviewed or changed them. The rankings and raise amounts were reviewed by upper management, but never the written appraisals. Curb your paranoia.
It means you most likely were doing something right, 8:51 pm. Good work!
Unfortunately, I've seen many lab managers that got to were they where by being jerks. This has been especially true since the lab was turned over to Bechtel-based "for-profit" management. The "gazelle vs. lion" guy is all too typical of this new breed of cut-throat, back-stabbing manager that infest the lab.
http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/2013/05/hey-lanl-and-sandia.html?showComment=1368229152210#c5184911644985578339
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.
Wow! That's crazy (and quite demotivating_! Leading technical divisions at Sandia without a Ph.D. is like the blind leading the blind!
You seem very enamored of yourself and your wondrous PhD. If you think no one without a PhD can possibly understand what you do "even on a superficial level," then you are seriously overestimating your own intelligence, and underestimating that of those around you. Personally, I'd rather have a MS chemist leading a Materials Chemistry department than a PhD engineer. In the course of going from a MS to a PhD (in physics) I merely learned much more detail about one tiny little area of physics, and sacrificed years of valuable work experience to do it. The main traits that having a PhD indicates are stubbornness and narrowness of vision and interest. Not good managerial material.
So your single experience makes a universal truth? I hope you aren't a scientist. Ever hear of "anecdotal evidence"?
Some good managers have PhDs, some don't. Some crappy managers have PhDs, some don't. I guess having a PhD blinds you to any shades but black and white. Or maybe it's the almost universally held belief among PhDs that they are fully capable of understanding every single thing about life, and it is not anywhere near as complicated as their field of expertise.
Ph.D. score = 2
M.S. score = 0
Ph.D. wins!
It is not good management (so much for the inherent value of the managerial PhD).
Your attitude is cynical and self-destructive. Most people who are educated and lucky enough to have your kind of job know that to let your coworkers and supervisors see that you think they are corrupt and self-serving is a career killer. You get what you ask for. Go tilt at some windmills. You have lots of them there near LLNL. Your unbridled sense of frustrated entitlement is amusing.
November 19, 2013 at 12:17 PM
I fail to understand why anyone would choose to work at a place where they believe the management and its processes are corrupt. Unless you believe that all management everywhere is corrupt (some on this blog apparently do), why not change employers??
Is it possible that poor performers have two things in common; 1) they are not mobile, and 2) they believe management is corrupt?
We were there first, and we are the lab. Management companies come and go.
Our hopes are for management reform.
OK, after a while, it is difficult to tell which one is which. The bastards inherited one another methods of "management," so they look the same, behave the same. So the conclusuon is: they are the same bred of "bastard."
November 22, 2013 at 5:34 PM
You need to modify your colloquialisms "have no business" is clearly false. It IS their business; it is what they get paid to do. "Aren't qualified" or "can't do it" maybe?
The workers manage themselves.
Same objection. They DO have business being managers, very lucrative business. Change your colloquialism. "Have no business" is a phrase out of the 50's. It is old and nonsensical in today's world.
I however feel little bad for a couple of good group leaders and a couple of former/present division leaders in PLS who do not deserve a general name calling. This couple of them might not be the best managers in the world but they have integrity.
"Mr. Egotistical technocrat, how will YOU dress up this pig?"
November 23, 2013 at 1:52 PM
You haven't been around very long, have you? If what you say were true, no one would be bitching about it.
Hard work and accomplishment used to be very valued at the lab. Past 5 years or so it's all about sucking up to the crowd on overhead. Eventually this will topple the lab...it's driving out all the talent and we're left with more and more people on overhead with nebulous responsibilities.
said: "...this blog would fill up with all cheers for managements. There would be good-name-calling-with-contentment...."
I can't let this pass unchallenged.
This guy obviously hasn't been reading this blog much, has he? LLNL and LANL could cure cancer and invent free energy, and they'd still be badmouthed by the neanderthals on this cesspool blog. The most vocal folks on this blog are elementary-school malcontents whose lives amount to nothing, so they live for dragging others down to their level.
Don't pretend that any issue will ever get a fair hearing (either way) on this blog.
This guy obviously hasn't been reading this blog much, has he? LLNL and LANL could cure cancer and invent free energy, and they'd still be badmouthed by the neanderthals on this cesspool blog. The most vocal folks on this blog are elementary-school malcontents whose lives amount to nothing, so they live for dragging others down to their level.
Don't pretend that any issue will ever get a fair hearing (either way) on this blog.
November 23, 2013 at 5:02 PM
AMEN!
November 23, 2013 at 8:43 PM
"Ilk"?? Yeah, I call that "name calling." How about completely stopping disparagement of people you disagree with?? How about just refuting their arguments, and if their comments are not arguments but disparagement, just ignore them? Does taking the high road hurt you that much? How did we become a nation filled with people with such thin skins?
Right on target. So much good talent has fled the NNSA labs in the last few years. The labs are running on vapors at this point and the scientific gas tank is almost empty.
November 24, 2013 at 6:26 PM
You must realize that ER does absolutely nothing that they are not told to do by LLNS upper management. Management abuse of employees comes from the top. Is is their corporate culture. Live with it or leave.
Watch out for Theresa Schantz. This person is a devil-lette in disguise. A very sweet talker with poison in her heart.
Jennifer Szutu was already a abrasive lawyer. After she was promoted to take place of Bob Perko; she became more powerful and extremely ferocious.
Is LLNL a National Lab or National Management company?
November 25, 2013 at 9:16 AM
Of course LLNL is a national lab. However, LLNS is a management company. Those who persist in thinking of LLNL as an organization are mistaken. It is a collection of office buildings, labs, and equipment belonging to DOE/NNSA. LLNS supplies the people and the organization to manage them.
Given the unbridled growth of support and management types, does NNSA want a national management company or a national laboratory?
Far better, in their minds, to reward a "management company" to keep tight reins on everyone and value compliance and cost-saving over science. In today's world, no one really expects good science from a weapons laboratory anyway.
November 26, 2013 at 7:05 AM
If you don't like that managers make so much more than you, then your only two choices are to become a manager, or to shut up and forget it. The inequity is in your lack of ambition. If you think all employees should be paid the same, guess what that makes you?
Back in the day technical competence was a filter for management consideration. Those managers and their employees had a level of mutual
respect due in part to a common experience in the arena of technical rigor and achievement.
Only modular (black box) NIF installers moved into management or political appointee managers would make
such a gross mischaracterization
of our innovative technical staff by stating they were not "ambitious".
Engineering is now peppered with managers that don't respect their staff for this reason and it shows. They think leveraging the technical staff is a valid and superior substitute for their own lack of engineering achievement. Very sad indeed.
I don't know how one would fix this other than periodic rotation of managers back into technical roles. Even a dog won't usually SH_T where he eventually has to sleep.
So are you saying that as an engineering PhD, you'd rather be managed by a chemistry PhD than a BS engineer? Just another example of scientific elitism.
There are former technical innovators now managers that successfully transcend the various disciplines with honor and leadership.
Yes it is a challenge for the chemist to rank the engineer or the other way around. However, that doesn't mean appreciation and respect are absent, as is the case with the non-technical political appointee.
November 30, 2013 at 9:51 AM
Correct, and I would go further to say that in many (most) cases, the less capable technical people make the best managers since they know first-hand how difficult the work is and appreciate from experience how valuable the really good technical people are. I have known several so-so technical people who became excellent managers having "found their niche" with a combination of tech-savvy and people-savvy. The latter is often woefully missing in the best technical people.
The 1 to N version has employee rank in increments or decrements of 1 employee. This suggests a very small uncertainty (high confidence) in the completed rank set over the courser bucket style rank set.
Question 1:
Referenced to the Man-Hours (MH) spent on the bucket style ranking, and normalized to the size of each population, how many multiples of MH are required to achieve the finer resolution 1-N ranking?
Question 2:
If the answer to question 1 is no more time or an insignificant amount of extra MH are needed, what are the 1-N rankers doing that is so efficient while acquiring such low uncertainty, or put another way, whats up with the bucket ranker process?
Question 3:
Is the 1-N rank one of those $10 DMM situations where they have high digital resolution with low accuracy?
Question 4:
We are talking about ~2% average pay packages in recent years yes?
What is the total dollar expense consumed for the 2013 ranking process compared to the pay package dollar bring in for 2013?
Certainly we don't want to burn 2,000 calories on the hunt for a 1,500 calorie catch, and in doing so, we don't want to bring down the other guys deer (accuracy).
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.
Who gives a crap? More scientific elitism.
How can those guys lead technical divisions and don't have PhDs?
December 1, 2013 at 12:58 PM
That's a fairly recent conceit. Lots of division leaders in the 50's, 60's, and 70's did not have PhDs. But they did know how to get things done, during arguably the best decades of the two weapons labs.
After all, both LLNL and LANL are now being managed by Bechtel, a construction company, for goodness sakes!
December 1, 2013 at 8:34 PM
You are wrong on two counts. First, the labs are managed by LLCs whose managing partner is UC, not Bechtel. Second, Bechtel is far from just a "construction company" and you or anyone else can confirm that by a simple web search. The Chairman of the LLNS Board of Governors is Pattiz, a UC Regent. By my count, only 4 of the 16 current Governors of LLNS are Bechtel. Try to get your facts straight.
POS
It doesn't make sense.
Shouldn't the appraisals be completed before ranking begins?
December 3, 2013 at 4:08 PM
Yes of course, if you are referring to formal ranking. As has been brought up here before, informal ranking of employees occurs in supervisors' heads on a daily basis. But the formal ranking process involves ranking employees who work for different supervisors/managers in the same ranking pool (maybe a division), precipitating disputes among supervisors and managers about whose employees are better. This can only be even marginally justified on the basis of appraisal results, which are usually also the result of only one supervisor/manager input, thus also open to dispute. I am continually amazed that the managers competing for money for their employees' raises don't come to blows. I have seen cases where it was a close call. Any employees who think their managers conspire against them as a group should be flies on the wall in these sessions. The vehemence with which managers defend their best employees for the best raises is eye-opening.
Heck, GE used to only require around 5% of their employees to be placed in this category each year with their cut-throat annual ranking system. The ranking system being employed at the lab is even more cut-throat and severe than the policies used in the most abusive companies in the mean ol' corporate world! Heckavajob.
Agreed. I ranked my employees and critiqued the rankings of other managers every year for over a decade. There was NEVER a "mandatory ranking distribution." It is a fantasy designed to sow dissent and lower morale. I guess misery loves company.
By the way, the "critiquing" process was just as much to correct managers who thought all their employees were garbage, as for the opposite.
December 7, 2013 at 6:01 PM
Do you not understand that appraisals are done before rankings? And that rankings are based on appraisals? Where do you think the numbers used for rankings come from? You are sadly misinformed.
the appraisal is a form of feedback from management in terms of employee growth, areas to improve, etc.
If appraisals and closed door management sentiment are
grossly out of sync and significant workplace changes occur (layoffs,etc.), only hard corrections are left that may present an employment performance history discontinuity. This will be difficult to defend in court. The courts will look at this as not working with employees in good faith, capricious, and rather sleazy.
December 7, 2013 at 11:08 PM
At LANL (at least in the division in which I was a manager), Rankings were based on appraisal scores, and the rankings formed the basis for the initial salary negotiations (with other managers). The wording of the actual appraisals had virtually nothing to do with the process, and was never addressed or changed as a result of the process.