Best ever glassdoor review for Sandia Labs:
“You will not find a better company to work for! There’s nothing like it. ”
Current Employee - Member of Technical Staff in Albuquerque, NM
I have been working at Sandia full-time (More than 5 years)
Pros
This is my top ten list:
1. Easy to get a job. Lack of candidates with US citizenship and advanced degrees resulted in hiring those who couldn't get or keep jobs in private sector. Interviews consist of behavioral questions, and no technical questions are asked.
2. Non-existent dress code. I have seen more cleavage and butt cheeks here than at Hooters. There are many college coeds and office admins who dress provocatively. A+
3. Work-life balance would make French jealous. Many employees take 2 hour lunch breaks and/or always come in late and leave early. Working over weekends is so uncommon, you will not see another living soul around. Telecommuting is encouraged, and some employees never show up for work.
4. Encouraged to come up with the most ridiculous ideas that get funded. Never mind if there is no market for your product/idea because you will get more money to go around and market this product to other groups and customers. It is a great place to reinvent the wheel.
5. At the end of each financial year, you get to splurge on new equipment, computers, and etc to spend down unused funds.
6. Get time off for working overtime.
7. Traveling to conferences and training is encouraged.
8. Outstanding educational benefits – You get to go full time to an Ivy League university while getting paid 75% of your salary.
9. Opportunity to shake hands with state officials and senators who like to come over and brag how much they did for SNL and NM.
10. Free healthcare at the onsite clinic.
Cons
No downsides at all to working here. This place will ruin you for other jobs.
Advice to Management
Keep doing the same thing. There’s no such thing as too much of a good thing.
“You will not find a better company to work for! There’s nothing like it. ”
Current Employee - Member of Technical Staff in Albuquerque, NM
I have been working at Sandia full-time (More than 5 years)
Pros
This is my top ten list:
1. Easy to get a job. Lack of candidates with US citizenship and advanced degrees resulted in hiring those who couldn't get or keep jobs in private sector. Interviews consist of behavioral questions, and no technical questions are asked.
2. Non-existent dress code. I have seen more cleavage and butt cheeks here than at Hooters. There are many college coeds and office admins who dress provocatively. A+
3. Work-life balance would make French jealous. Many employees take 2 hour lunch breaks and/or always come in late and leave early. Working over weekends is so uncommon, you will not see another living soul around. Telecommuting is encouraged, and some employees never show up for work.
4. Encouraged to come up with the most ridiculous ideas that get funded. Never mind if there is no market for your product/idea because you will get more money to go around and market this product to other groups and customers. It is a great place to reinvent the wheel.
5. At the end of each financial year, you get to splurge on new equipment, computers, and etc to spend down unused funds.
6. Get time off for working overtime.
7. Traveling to conferences and training is encouraged.
8. Outstanding educational benefits – You get to go full time to an Ivy League university while getting paid 75% of your salary.
9. Opportunity to shake hands with state officials and senators who like to come over and brag how much they did for SNL and NM.
10. Free healthcare at the onsite clinic.
Cons
No downsides at all to working here. This place will ruin you for other jobs.
Advice to Management
Keep doing the same thing. There’s no such thing as too much of a good thing.
Comments
Bitter much?
May 11, 2015 at 1:53 PM
Someone on this blog always thinks that anyone who uses sarcasm (which he apparently doesn't have the capacity to understand), or posts anything negative about one of the labs, is "bitter." OK, the applicability of the term eludes me, but aside from that, why can't a serious poster simply be expressing frustration, extreme dislike, or yes, even hatred of the current lab management, without being "bitter" (whatever this persistent commenter thinks that term means). To me "bitter" is one of the five flavors of food; it does not describe a person or his attitude.
Bitter is as bitter does.
This is dead on, exactly the way it is. Too bad I cannot get a job in Sandia but this is how it is, I know.
The poster does not have a problem with management the poster hates the lab workers. Why? well time and time again on these blogs it always seems to be some ex-employee who got fired due to profoundly low performance. They cannot accept that their own life choices and decisions where what brought them to this point in life. Instead they blame everyone else. They key giveaway is that they always say the same thing. It is the statement that workers at the labs are not employable in the real world. This of course is completely false as everyone knows. However in the case of the bitter ex-lab employees who got fired this indeed is true. In fact they never should have been hired at the labs in the first place. They than try to project this on everyone else and live a life of pure bitterness because being bitter is better than facing the truth.
Sorry, but coordinated and complicit LANSLLNS management actions to terminate or blacklist career employees does not support your claim. It is only LANSLLNS non-transparency, not low employee performance, that allows this unethical abuse to go unaddressed. Believe what you must if it helps you sleep at night.
You don't work here , do you.
May 12, 2015 at 3:41 PM
There is absolutely no evidence for this to support your unfounded assertion. Do you actually believe that the only people who dislike LLNSLANS are those who have been fired for poor perfoemance? Or only ex-employees? Get a clue.
May 12, 2015 at 8:29 PM
Again this post has nothing to do with LANS or LLNLS it is attacking the workers not the management.
May 13, 2015 at 7:16 PM
It is just stupid. "LANL" and "LLNL" do not exist as entities, just land and buildings and facilities owned by DOE/NNSA. They are only "incarnated" by a contractor chosen to run them by DOE/NNSA. If no contractor is chosen, the doors close and the lights go out, and the workers go home without jobs, because there is nobody to work for.
The thousands of talented employees that work at LANL and LLNL are here to perform mission objectives for DOE and NNSA. The Contractor is not the center of mass, the mission is. If lab mission objectives are executed poorly by the Contractor, the "lights go out" for the Contractor, and mission objectives established for employees at LANL and LLNL, will dictate the need to find a more suitable Contractor with the proper perspective and humility to compliment these mission objectives going forward.
May 13, 2015 at 8:57 PM
You expect "humility" from a multi-million dollar contractor?? Good luck with that. What would you think if the contractor expected "humility" from its employees? HaHaHaHa!!
That is the world according to Bechtel. Reality happens to be different.
If there are no scientists, there will be no nukes. However, if there is no Bechtel, there will be still nukes.
May 14, 2015 at 4:12 AM
Probably true. But if one extracted only the best weapon scientists and engineers from LANL, LLNL, and SNL, say the top 15%, and fired everyone else, including all the scientists not working directly on weapons, one could then establish a top-notch weapons laboratory at a small fraction of the current cost. The taxpayers would be very happy. And Bechtel would not be interested.
May 14, 2015 at 4:12 AM
O B.S. The military already has the nukes. Just let them keep them and kick the tires on them now and then.
And how do you propose to make sure they still work? Just praying? Or maybe Bechtel will tell you so, and therefore it has to be so.
May 15, 2015 at 3:41 PM
www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/world/asia/china-making-some-missiles-more-powerful.html
Call Bechtel, when the ones in our arsenal are not good enough.