Anonymous said...
Is it true LLNL cannot attract qualified people and when they do hire someone, they quit few months later? Have you seen that happen in your department?
Comments
No! Next question.
I don't know about a few months, but I see a lot of turnover throughout the complex. Paperwork and procedures and obstacles keep getting added, benefits and resources and incentives to stay keep getting removed, and eventually it gets hard to retain the best people.
LLNS workforce decisions are based on their assessment of a "business need". However, unlike the real free market, LLNS isn't burdened with delayed deliverables where an opportunistic competitor would quickly acquire that market space. As such, employee turn over has little impact to their award fee, so expect more of the same from LLNS and assume 401k employees are situationally aware of their options outside of LLNL.
LLNS's and LANS's problem is that new employees (if they are to work in mission-impacting fields) need thousands of dollars and many months to get a clearance. If they then leave within a period of months or a few years, all that investment is wasted. The clearance costs are borne by the contractor. This is unsustainable. So much for TCP2 and 401k attraction vs the old UC pension. Mimicking the "new" US workforce means dealing with the "new" US workforce's mobility pattern, which is incompatible with long-term, high-risk, highly technical weapons research and development, using employees who, because of clearance requirements, are not easily replaceable in a timely fashion. Lots of changes needed here, mostly from Congress.
Isn't retention a requirement in the contract?
"The clearance costs are borne by the contractor. "
June 17, 2017 at 5:40 PM
Not true.
June 17, 2017 at 5:40 PM
Not true.
Not true.
June 18, 2017 at 1:31 PM
You need to read the prime contract before you spout off. It might also help to ask your personnel security director.
June 18, 2017 at 1:31 PM
You need to read the prime contract before you spout off. It might also help to ask your personnel security director.
I heard another way they leverage profit is to bring in uncleared people from Bechtel, charge LANL for clearing them, and than
after 3 years move them out of the lab. Nice
8:50 might be right. Two of my neighbors followed a similar pattern; coming to LANL without a clearance, immediately applying for a clearance, working in a seemingly made-up job, and then moving away to another Bechtel contract in another State soon after their clearances were granted. Both were at LANL for less than two years.
I get the strong impression, particularly from former colleagues in the TCP-1 plan (monthly 7% pension payments required - w/o LLNS 401K matching), that they are just holding on and looking forward to retiring at 20 to 30 years of service, as soon as it makes sense financially given each situation. As for TCP-2 folks and 6 year terms and Postdocs - it's hard to say today. The extreme cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area is a huge disincentive to younger employees. When you start having a family, and you can't keep up financially with even two incomes - Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Utah, Colorado, etc... start looking pretty good !
Let's not even talk about the cost of daycare/preschool in the Bay Area and horrible freeway commuting, gridlock, etc..., or the fact that LLNL can't compete with Facebook, Google, Tesla, etc... employee lifestyle benefits, then it's no surprise that LLNL can't find young talent !
What the Lab needs is some Six Sigma former helicopter pilot type punks to uplift their imaginary assurance program!! Throw away and never file any negative assessments lately??
I guess LLNL will have to work on it's H1B allocation so they can hire more from India and China. Maybe even Russia ! Russian grad students are world class coders according to Putin (aka hackers).
We could license NIF laser tech to the Chinese. Oh sorry, they already re-engineered our good stuff (I'm actually not kidding !) based on our publications and patent filings.
We could license NIF laser tech to the Chinese. Oh sorry, they already re-engineered our good stuff (I'm actually not kidding !) based on our publications and patent filings.