Does LLNL deserve 3.4 stars on Glassdoor.com?
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...
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Agreed. 2-5 years for early career folks OK for experience and resume building only. As unfortunate as it is to say.
Does LLNL still have the 25% rule with postdocs, where postdocs can us 25% of their charge time on independent research?
3.7: ORNL
3.6: PNNL
3.6: SNL
3.5: LANL
3.4: LLNL
3.7: Ames
3.7: LBNL
3.7: ORNL
3.6: PNNL
3.6: SNL
3.5: LANL
3.4: LLNL
3.3: Best-Buy
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - when working at Best Buy just isn't enough.
hmmm, inversely proportional to talent.
JPL at top, LLNL/Best Buy at bottom.
June 24, 2014 at 5:25 PM
There's actually *a lot* of truth to this statement. The "scientists" at all the weapons labs (LLNL, LANL, and SNL) are 2nd rate (or lower!) scientists and *are not* well-known or regarded in their fields. Both academia and industry look down on the weapons labs staff as lazy employees.
For career labbies who haven't been out searching in the job market for the last 10 years, things look pretty dismal working at the weapon labs. The job security has weakened considerably, benefits have been cut and management seems to only care about safety and security metrics that will keep a dysfunctional NNSA happy and off their backs. The science is dying, though there are still some isolated pockets of good work being done.
NNSA and their private management pals are in the "pretend and extend" mode. It can go on for many more years before the bottom finally drops out due to bureaucratic rot. However, the rot will eventually do these labs in and the NNSA complex will continue to shrink.
LLNL is awful. Within weeks of starting there I went looking for a new job.
PhD?
And you are still around?
This is not to say the lab is perfect, it spends far too much of its overhead money chasing mirages instead of reinvesting in its most successful endeavors for example, but what workplace is perfect? I am in regular contact with my colleagues in academia and industry and each of those have their problems as well. There is an issue in general with choosing a scientific/technical career in an era where financial and some business professions will always be better rewarded. Most of us chose the science path understanding that going in. All in all I still think LLNL remains a pretty good place to pursue a scientific/technical career.
The people who regularly post on this blog are so far off from what I experience everyday at LLNL, it isn't even funny. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if the majority of posts are by half-a-dozen people. The bitterness and arrogance in many of these posts is really too much...
The vast majority of people I work with are top quality, enjoy living in the Bay Area, really enjoy being at LLNL, and have a lot of respect from people in industry and academia. The complaints I usually hear are about a the often unclear mission from up top and unhappiness about pay increases over the last few years.
I have worked in quite a few companies in industry, and by far the culture and people at LLNL are definitely a cut above. Maybe I've just been lucky...
Anyway, flame away. I've seen what sort of response people get on here for daring say anything positive about LLNL or the national labs. That uncivil behavior is what I'd call the real shame.
To, June 29, 2014 at 10:54 PM, sorry to hear you are planning to leave. My management has been stellar, but in an org of 6,000+ I'm sure there is going to be good/bad (and even terrible). Good luck to you. :(
I think congress did us taxpayers a real disservice by throwing UC management overboard, and choosing to spend limited money on profit and state taxes. It also heightened the importance of "compliance", which was what congress wanted.
Nevertheless, LLNL has found ways to pursue important technical work, and has succeeded in moving ahead despite the additional "compliance" dead weight.
It's still a great place to perform important and interesting work in service to the nation.
There absolutely is better out there for probably 50% of Livermorons. If you've been at LLNL for a long time, but haven't accomplished as much as your peers in the private sector, then it will be worse out there for you especially in the best and most competitive industries.
This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't for the excessive overhead taxes we pay. The site support tax is currently over 50% (actually more, since overhead is levied on top of overhead). As an individual employee, I or my projects pay well over $100K/yr for "facilities support." And that's just me. Similar payments are obtained from everyone in my building. A decent working environment doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation considering the amount of money we pay. It doesn't take me weeks to fix a maintenance problem at my house, and I don't need to shell out $100K either.
This is not an isolated event and it is not confined to facilities issues. This type of dysfunction is so pervasive throughout the Laboratory that everyone simply takes it for granted. Direct funded employees receive nothing but unfunded mandates in return for the excessive taxes they are required to pay.
Laboratory management is grossly incompetent. It is a joke. This is self-evident considering the negative rates of return observed on our high overhead rates. We have high costs. We have declining budgets. We have a demoralized workforce. LLNS said the opposite would happen. They failed. Who has been fired, other then maintenance staff that actually benefited the Laboratory?
Most staff feel the new management team has done a spectacular job at improving the lab. This lab is far more efficient and cost effective and the new managers now care about the careers of their scientific staff. It's been an 200% improvement since LLNS came aboard with savvy business assistants from world class companies like Bechtel.
Bravo, LLNS! Keep up the good work. Your workforce is rooting for you! Together, we can accomplish great things.
Hear, Hear!
June 30, 2014 at 4:31 PM
Knapp solved this problem at LANL by forcing his weapon engineers to go work at the facilities. This also turned out to be a humongous failure, however, this probably won't stop him from trying it again. Good luck Livermore....
July 3, 2014 at 5:03 AM
That statement should scare the hell out of everyone. Imagine that our nuclear weapons are as in as bad shape as our facilities have gotten to be since Knapp did this!
July 10, 2014 at 3:17 PM
No worries, we have one-point safe toilets that can endure the B61 stockpile-to-target sequence at LANL now.