Marketability of LLNL workers.
I've Stanford grad school buddies in the valley for a while and they say the only LLNL employees worth anything are the Comp Sci folks willing to be worker bees. Otherwise anybody over 35 is tainted and can't hack it... some examples of top level managers leaving trying to make it... it's a small world and word gets around.
LLNL:golden handcuffs are slowing turning to LEAD.
14 comments:
"...I've Stanford grad school buddies in the valley for a while and they say the only LLNL employees worth anything are the Comp Sci folks willing to be worker bees. Otherwise anybody over 35 is tainted and can't hack it..."
That is a broad brush you are slopping around. Essentially only the "Millennials" are of any worth at LLNL, with perhaps a few "Millennial approved" Comp Sci employees thrown in (?).
Interesting Millennial point of view, from the generation that will "transcend beyond race, religion, and gender bias". I guess one must read the Millennial fine print list of disclosures.
Not true, if you have the right skills and are willing to work like a dog in the valley (something that most lab employees don't know how to do). But you're starting at ground zero for establishing credibility, so don't expect people to bow to you because you wrote dozens of papers as a LLNL scientist. They do not care about those things, but they do care if you can act like a human being and use the word "customer" properly.
I am calling BS on the originlca poster. Either it is troll bait or someone who is really out of it. I know a great many people who have left LLNL from all ages for jobs in the tech industry in the Bay area and elsewhere. I think most of us can name someone they know who has left for such positions. I would add that some very talented people have stayed for various reason as well. We have also lost a number of people who have "wrote dozens of papers as LLNL scientists" to both industry and academia. If you have the skills to write peer reviewed technical papers I think you will do alright in today's world.
That claim is baloney. I work at Google now and I run into old friends from the Labs all the time. We come from all age groups. Smart people are always valuable, and the DOE Labs employ many, many smart people.
" DOE Labs employ many, many smart people."
That is true but at the same time DOE does not believe in people it believes in institutions.
This post is more of the same old infantile anti-DOE drivel that gets posted on this blog all the time.
Yes, if you're a spoon-fed weapons guy who hasn't done anything except model some weapon component for the last 30 years, you probably wouldn't fit well in the competitive and entrepreneurial climate of silicon valley.
On the other hand, if you're like a GREAT many YOUNG scientists at the labs, who have been busting their ass bringing in money, developing a customer base, traveling across the US and the world, speaking at every possible occasion, and publishing in the actual open literature, you probably have the exact skills they are looking for, because guess what - science these days IS a business, and to survive you have to have real skills.
Don't project your smug entitlement and lack of skill onto the rest of the complex, much of which is working extremely hard to do a good job rather than suck up government money.
The valley is about innovation and creating value. Something DOE/NNSA used to be good at, but that starting sliding downhill in 1992 and is accelerating at LLNL still -- and in free-fall at LANL.
Creative, entrepreneurial scientists are what you find in the WFO shops like Global Security. Which is also why you see so many of them leave for better opportunities elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the "core mission" of the lab say good riddance, because all that energy and activity was distracting us from finishing our milestone 3,723,442th run of ALE3D on the structural components of the B-"older than dirt" system and squeezing NIF performance from 1% of predictions to 1.05%.
Good riddance to the global security people. That corner of the lab is indeed a distraction, and a festering sore of discontent. It is filled by people who think they are entrepreneurs, yet rely on a huge national asset to which they contribute nothing but complaints. Bye, and good luck working in the real world where people care about more than viewgraphs and quad charts and BS.
This is to "February 21, 2015 at 11:04 PM"
I don't think the OP was projecting anything except a light on the situation. Anyone who saw the writing on the wall, or heard the sounds of circling the drain was out of there by the mid to late '90's. Those who remained know the best what choosing to be trapped in lab amber is like.
I think the original poster was commenting that the culture at LLNL is not one innovation and science, but merely survival.
Of course out of 7,000 lab people, 50 can be successful on the outside.
Unfortunately, this 0.7% is not the lab norm.
Stanford grads are self-entitled rich pricks who party hearty and take credit for others work.
Can't make their bed without a maid.
Same as it ever was.
Go Bears.
Too much Ecstasy, too many bathhouse trysts, too much hype, not enough hard work... go Stanfurd..
typical Cal inferiority complex
"typical Cal inferiority complex
February 27, 2015 at 8:29 AM"
And they should have an inferiority complex. Cal is public and Stanford is private.
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