This BLOG is for LLNL present and past employees, friends of LLNL and anyone impacted by the privatization of the Lab to express their opinions and expose the waste, wrongdoing and any kind of injustice against employees and taxpayers by LLNS/DOE/NNSA.
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How the hell can this kind of crap be called journalism? The entire article is simply an unfounded speculative question. ..some that wouldn't merit a Bazooka Gum wrapper. Junk news.
The correct answer is LLNL is well managed at all levels. Contract extensions for good performance are regular and ordinary. LLNL never was the problem. It was collateral damage insisted by demented Pete Domenici ...if LANL coughs LLNL gets an injection.
"It was collateral damage insisted by demented Pete Domenici ...if LANL coughs LLNL gets an injection."
Well there could be some truth in this but I say that many people wanted a for profit structure for all labs since there was money to made. The issues at LANL had to be blown to the moon in order to get it to go private along with LLNL.
NNSA is incompetent thru and thru.
Ok you have a fair point. Look there are lots of people who work at NNSA that need jobs and a big salary.
Domenici worked to create an organization independent of the incompetent DOE to run the Nuclear Weapons program. Can you really say with a straight face that NNSA is worse than DOE? Before you answer, think about Hazel O'Leary.
We tried AEC. It didn't work. We tried DOE. It didn't work. We tried NNSA. It didn't work.
How about trying something completely different? How about letting DOD take over oversight of the nuclear weapon labs? They are the ultimate customers for the 'product'.
Check the GS pay scale, or even the SES pay scale, if you think NNSA staff make big salaries. You have to be way up in the SES pay scale, which is nearly impossible to do, before you make anything close to what a senior scientist makes at the labs.
"Check the GS pay scale, or even the SES pay scale, if you think NNSA staff make big salaries. You have to be way up in the SES pay scale, which is nearly impossible to do, before you make anything close to what a senior scientist makes at the labs.
July 6, 2017 at 11:08 PM"
This is partially true, however you leave out the fact the NNSA people typically have only have bs or ms degrees from mediocre schools with mediocre grades. They are paid much higher in the NNSA than they would ever hope to get in the real world. In other words the typical NNSA person is utterly mediocre with little in the way of actual skills and anyone who has dealt with them can attest to this. The very few that have some kind of talent cannot deal working in such conditions and move to other organizations very quickly. This is not arrogance and it is not meant to be mean, it is simply a fact. The top senior lab scientists have usually actually accomplished something and their pay scale is par with the pay scale for senior scientists at other DOE labs or universities.
One of the big issues about the DC crowd is that it has grown so large with so many employees that the talent pool has become completely diluted. This is coupled with the increase in the high-tech sector which competes for the talent. Sure you have a few selfless and talented individualizes who go into government work to serve. In the old days when the number of these jobs was 1/10 the size of it is now these people could actually make a difference, but now when you have literally millions of of such government jobs they are a drop in the bucket and you get the current situation. If you think about this DOE and NNSA are not exceptions to this rule. There is lots of evidence that our intelligence agencies no longer function very effectively. When you have 17 such agencies with a huge number of people than it is no wonder that they may longer have top people.
In some ways, many of the NNSA staff are much more skilled than lab scientists, and it's not technical skills but people and organizational and strategic skills. Lab scientists don't usually have those skills, and don't value them, which makes the NNSA staffers jobs even harder, and makes their perseverance more remarkable. They have to put up with some of the most arrogant block-headed people on the planet, and smile and come back tomorrow and do it again. That's worth a few bucks. Also, note that most of the NNSA staff, and nearly all the junior staff, are not feds, they are contractors, so GS pay scales do not apply.
"In some ways, many of the NNSA staff are much more skilled than lab scientists, and it's not technical skills but people and organizational and strategic skills."
False, they completely lack organizational and strategic skills. That is the main issue.
"Lab scientists don't usually have those skills, and don't value them, which makes the NNSA staffers jobs even harder, and makes their perseverance more remarkable. "
Lab scientists are not the reason NNSA has done so badly. Could you please provide an example of how scientist are the problem?
"They have to put up with some of the most arrogant block-headed people on the planet"
Huh...NNSA people don't even deal with the workforce they deal with the management.
You have a nice anti-science screed but science has nothing to do with the problems of NNSA.
There are a lot of ex-Sandia employees with a bad "chip on their shoulders" being employed by NNSA/DOE. Also, if DOE/NNSA are so much more skilled than the Lab folks, why do they hire contractors like John Immelle (former LLNL and LANL) to ask questions for them at DRAAG meetings? Quite frankly, it's a disgrace.
Some of you guys are driving home 10:07 am's point beautifully. Labbies are pretty unique, and that is not always a good thing.
July 7, 2017 at 3:22 PM
How? 10:07 am did not have a point. They had a bitter rant against scientists. If there was a point it was that there are some very bitter crazy people who blame others for their own failures. Why one would need to keep making that point over and over again is beyond me but 10:07am who is presumably unemployed which may have something to do with them being bitter, has nothing but time to to simmer in their own hatred. Fortunately such bitter people are unique and that is a very good thing.
10:07 hasn't interacted with any of the NNSA staff I work with if he thinks they have people, organizational, and strategic skills.
Every one of them I know has hired outside contractors to help them with those very things. Unfortunately, many NNSA staff don't have the experience to be able to tell the difference between a good contractor and a bad one, often sticking with bad ones far after they have proved their complete incompetence.
10:07 is completely dead on about scientists being blockheads and impossible to deal with. Everyone knows this is true and you would have to be blind to deny that that the problems with the labs is not rooted deeply in a cowboy culture of arrogance which is due to some of the most block headed socially inept people who have no appreciation of people skills and organizational skills and if you don't believe these people are weird than why would these people not even value you these skills? Have you ever meet one of these lab or university science creatures, they cannot even tie their shoes much less organize anything. Ever watch the Big Bang show, that is the truth this is what these "people" are really like. These are facts people, facts pure, simple, immutable and eternal. NNSA people should be paid millions and millions of dollars to have to deal with these people. Some of us have taken the blue pill of clarity and see the true realty of what scientists are really like and that they have utterly polluted the labs with cowboy of hell out of control cultures and that labs should be closed down. I take offense that just having these completely rational views would mean someone is bitter or has a agenda against the labs or scientists. 10:07 is not bitter or has any kind of agenda other than the purity in ultra truth and that is why he/she always provide a plethora of numbers, figures, and statistics back up their brilliant claims and no one can deny that.
Seems that 9:27 and 10:03 might be the same nut. The two both write with poor grammar, both spew the same kooky anti-scientist generalizations, both are obviously confused individuals, and both write with such bitterness that one could reasonably conclude that the bitterness arises from being demoted or fired.
Evil, you should be able to tell if 9:27 misrepresented himself. If he did, do us (and the blog) a big favor and permanently block him.
Umm I hate to point this out to the scientist haters but the Labs cannot function with out science and scientists to guide them. E.g. if you don't have any criticality specialists, you really can't handle snm. The mission will fail and stupid things happen like managers too stupid to ask a scientist if changing the type of kitty litter you use matters. We need science and you know what, the show Big Bang Theory is (gasp!) just a TV show.
Evil, you should be able to tell if 9:27 misrepresented himself. If he did, do us (and the blog) a big favor and permanently block him.
July 8, 2017 at 5:45 PM
Sound good, but I think 9:21 or 10.29 should be the ones that are blocked. 9:27 and 10:03 may be bad and should be blocked but unfortunately I cannot find their posts so I say the poster from 5.45 PM should be blocked, at least on freedom of speech grounds. These should be checked if the used the trigger word tattoo.
Back when I worked at LLNL the work force was composed of all types. Competency was skewed toward the high end, one reason I never liked the way rankings were done. When it came to social skills there was a few that were geeks, but most would fit in at a bbq or baseball game quite easily. So 9:27 and friends are mistaken IMO.
That being said, merely being annoying or grossly inaccurate is not justification for the ban-hammer.
LLNS/LANS as the parent organization has an annual operating budget of several million. Returning to the OP, once LANS is gone, there will be only one source of income to run this useful oversight. So, impact on LLNS once LANS is gone will be to spend twice as much per year on parent company expenses.
"Check the GS pay scale, or even the SES pay scale, if you think NNSA staff make big salaries. You have to be way up in the SES pay scale, which is nearly impossible to do, before you make anything close to what a senior scientist makes at the labs."
This is true. Federal employees in the San Francisco Bay Area get a 20% bump in salary for cost of living, but the GS scale (I'm guessing here based on my 1st hand observation) for equivalent education/experience level Federal employees is 75 to 80% of Lab salaries, even including the SF Bay Area bump up.
To live in the Bay Area a Federal employee must have his/her spouse working a full time job. Bay Area homes are in the $900K to $1.5M range while equivalent homes in Los Alamos are $500K to $800K. And CA has high property tax, income tax, sales tax, insurance rates...
And let me add - the traffic in the SF Bay Area has become unbearable most visible hours of the day. The minute the sun rises, we are in grid lock on 880, 580, 680, 101, 84, 85, 237,....
As a Lab retiree in Livermore, I think very hard on whether I want to venture out of town on any given day. Am I up for the drive ? Got extra water ? Gas tank full ? AC working ?
32 comments:
How the hell can this kind of crap be called journalism? The entire article is simply an unfounded speculative question. ..some that wouldn't merit a Bazooka Gum wrapper. Junk news.
The correct answer is LLNL is well managed at all levels. Contract extensions for good performance are regular and ordinary. LLNL never was the problem. It was collateral damage insisted by demented Pete Domenici ...if LANL coughs LLNL gets an injection.
NNSA is incompetent thru and thru.
"It was collateral damage insisted by demented Pete Domenici ...if LANL coughs LLNL gets an injection."
Well there could be some truth in this but I say that many people wanted a for profit structure for all labs since there was money to made. The issues at LANL had to be blown to the moon in order to get it to go private along with LLNL.
NNSA is incompetent thru and thru.
Ok you have a fair point. Look there are lots of people who work at NNSA that need jobs and a big salary.
Domenici worked to create an organization independent of the incompetent DOE to run the Nuclear Weapons program. Can you really say with a straight face that NNSA is worse than DOE? Before you answer, think about Hazel O'Leary.
We tried AEC. It didn't work.
We tried DOE. It didn't work.
We tried NNSA. It didn't work.
How about trying something completely different?
How about letting DOD take over oversight of the nuclear weapon labs? They are the ultimate customers for the 'product'.
Check the GS pay scale, or even the SES pay scale, if you think NNSA staff make big salaries. You have to be way up in the SES pay scale, which is nearly impossible to do, before you make anything close to what a senior scientist makes at the labs.
We tried AEC. It didn't work.
We tried DOE. It didn't work.
We tried NNSA. It didn't work.
How about trying something completely different?
What?
AEC worked very well.
DOE was worked ok.
NNSA total disaster.
"Check the GS pay scale, or even the SES pay scale, if you think NNSA staff make big salaries. You have to be way up in the SES pay scale, which is nearly impossible to do, before you make anything close to what a senior scientist makes at the labs.
July 6, 2017 at 11:08 PM"
This is partially true, however you leave out the fact the NNSA people typically have only have bs or ms degrees from mediocre schools with mediocre grades. They are paid much higher in the NNSA than they would ever hope to get in the real world. In other words the typical NNSA person is utterly mediocre with little in the way of actual skills and anyone who has dealt with them can attest to this. The very few that have some kind of talent cannot deal working in such conditions and move to other organizations very quickly. This is not arrogance and it is not meant to be mean, it is simply a fact. The top senior lab scientists have usually actually accomplished something and their pay scale is par with the pay scale for senior scientists at other DOE labs or universities.
One of the big issues about the DC crowd is that it has grown so large with so many employees that the talent pool has become completely diluted. This is coupled with the increase in the high-tech sector which competes for the talent. Sure you have a few selfless and talented individualizes who go into government work to serve. In the old days when the number of these jobs was 1/10 the size of it is now these people could actually make a difference, but now when you have literally millions of
of such government jobs they are a drop in the bucket and you get the current situation. If you think about this DOE and NNSA are not exceptions to this rule.
There is lots of evidence that our intelligence agencies no longer function very effectively. When you have 17 such agencies with a huge number of people than it is no wonder that they may longer have top people.
In some ways, many of the NNSA staff are much more skilled than lab scientists, and it's not technical skills but people and organizational and strategic skills. Lab scientists don't usually have those skills, and don't value them, which makes the NNSA staffers jobs even harder, and makes their perseverance more remarkable. They have to put up with some of the most arrogant block-headed people on the planet, and smile and come back tomorrow and do it again. That's worth a few bucks. Also, note that most of the NNSA staff, and nearly all the junior staff, are not feds, they are contractors, so GS pay scales do not apply.
"In some ways, many of the NNSA staff are much more skilled than lab scientists, and it's not technical skills but people and organizational and strategic skills."
False, they completely lack organizational and strategic skills. That is the main issue.
"Lab scientists don't usually have those skills, and don't value them, which makes the NNSA staffers jobs even harder, and makes their perseverance more remarkable. "
Lab scientists are not the reason NNSA has done so badly. Could you please provide an example of how scientist are the problem?
"They have to put up with some of the most arrogant block-headed people on the planet"
Huh...NNSA people don't even deal with the workforce they deal with the management.
You have a nice anti-science screed but science has nothing to do with the problems of NNSA.
We tried AEC. It didn't work.
We tried DOE. It didn't work.
We tried NNSA. It didn't work.
How about trying something completely different?
What?
July 7, 2017 at 7:21 AM
Don't for the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) folks, another abysmal failure.
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is (or was) real.”
― Cormac McCarthy
There are a lot of ex-Sandia employees with a bad "chip on their shoulders" being employed by NNSA/DOE. Also, if DOE/NNSA are so much more skilled than the Lab folks, why do they hire contractors like John Immelle (former LLNL and LANL) to ask questions for them at DRAAG meetings? Quite frankly, it's a disgrace.
Some of you guys are driving home 10:07 am's point beautifully. Labbies are pretty unique, and that is not always a good thing.
Some of you guys are driving home 10:07 am's point beautifully. Labbies are pretty unique, and that is not always a good thing.
July 7, 2017 at 3:22 PM
How? 10:07 am did not have a point. They had a bitter rant against scientists. If there was a point it was that there are some very bitter crazy people who blame others for their own failures. Why one would need to keep making that point over and over again is beyond me but 10:07am who is presumably unemployed which may have something to do with them being bitter, has nothing but time to to simmer in their own hatred. Fortunately such bitter people are unique and that is a very good thing.
10:07 hasn't interacted with any of the NNSA staff I work with if he thinks they have people, organizational, and strategic skills.
Every one of them I know has hired outside contractors to help them with those very things. Unfortunately, many NNSA staff don't have the experience to be able to tell the difference between a good contractor and a bad one, often sticking with bad ones far after they have proved their complete incompetence.
July 7, 2017 at 9:16 PM
10:07 is completely dead on about scientists being blockheads and impossible to deal with. Everyone knows this is true and you would have to be blind to deny that that the problems with the labs is not rooted deeply in a cowboy culture of arrogance which is due to some of the most block headed socially inept people who have no appreciation of people skills and organizational skills and if you don't believe these people are weird than why would these people not even value you these skills? Have you ever meet one of these lab or university science creatures, they cannot even tie their shoes much less organize anything. Ever watch the Big Bang show, that is the truth this is what these "people" are really like. These are facts people, facts pure, simple, immutable and eternal. NNSA people should be paid millions and millions of dollars to have to deal with these people. Some of us have taken the blue pill of clarity and see the true realty of what scientists are really like and that they have utterly polluted the labs with cowboy of hell out of control cultures and that labs should be closed down. I take offense that just having these completely rational views would mean someone is bitter or has a agenda against the labs or scientists. 10:07 is not bitter or has any kind of agenda other than the purity in ultra truth and that is why he/she always provide a plethora of numbers, figures, and statistics back up their brilliant claims and no one can deny that.
Yikes.
The NNSA/LANS contact termination will not affect LANL unless NNSA needs lots more $ which is taken from plamned LLNL funds.
But failure of stockpile stewardship at LANL or new pit fab may be a disaster for both labs and the country.
...should read ...not affect LLNL...
Ms. than-for-then has spoken.
Seems that 9:27 and 10:03 might be the same nut. The two both write with poor grammar, both spew the same kooky anti-scientist generalizations, both are obviously confused individuals, and both write with such bitterness that one could reasonably conclude that the bitterness arises from being demoted or fired.
Evil, you should be able to tell if 9:27 misrepresented himself. If he did, do us (and the blog) a big favor and permanently block him.
Umm I hate to point this out to the scientist haters but the Labs cannot function with out science and scientists to guide them. E.g. if you don't have any criticality specialists, you really can't handle snm. The mission will fail and stupid things happen like managers too stupid to ask a scientist if changing the type of kitty litter you use matters. We need science and you know what, the show Big Bang Theory is (gasp!) just a TV show.
Move production away from LANL, period. The rocky flats decision was wrong.
Evil, you should be able to tell if 9:27 misrepresented himself. If he did, do us (and the blog) a big favor and permanently block him.
July 8, 2017 at 5:45 PM
Sound good, but I think 9:21 or 10.29 should be the ones that are blocked. 9:27 and 10:03 may be bad and should be blocked but unfortunately I cannot find their posts so I say the poster from 5.45 PM should be blocked, at least on freedom of speech grounds. These should be checked if the used the trigger word tattoo.
Ladies. Quarrelsome is not ladylike. Back to the kitchen...the cookies, girls.
Back when I worked at LLNL the work force was composed of all types. Competency was skewed toward the high end, one reason I never liked the way rankings were done. When it came to social skills there was a few that were geeks, but most would fit in at a bbq or baseball game quite easily. So 9:27 and friends are mistaken IMO.
That being said, merely being annoying or grossly inaccurate is not justification for the ban-hammer.
Must be too many liberals here, trying to ban and silence everyone they don't agree with. :)
LLNS/LANS as the parent organization has an annual operating budget of several million. Returning to the OP, once LANS is gone, there will be only one source of income to run this useful oversight. So, impact on LLNS once LANS is gone will be to spend twice as much per year on parent company expenses.
Explicitly forbidden by both LANS ans LLNS contracts with NNSA.
"Check the GS pay scale, or even the SES pay scale, if you think NNSA staff make big salaries. You have to be way up in the SES pay scale, which is nearly impossible to do, before you make anything close to what a senior scientist makes at the labs."
This is true. Federal employees in the San Francisco Bay Area get a 20% bump in salary for cost of living, but the GS scale (I'm guessing here based on my 1st hand observation) for equivalent education/experience level Federal employees is 75 to 80% of Lab salaries, even including the SF Bay Area bump up.
To live in the Bay Area a Federal employee must have his/her spouse working a full time job. Bay Area homes are in the $900K to $1.5M range while equivalent homes in Los Alamos are $500K to $800K. And CA has high property tax, income tax, sales tax, insurance rates...
Why are we living here ? I ask myself everyday !
Why are we living here ? I ask myself everyday !
Because the rest of the country is a dark horrible place, just look out the plane window next time your fly to NYC...Trump country. Scary stuff.
And let me add - the traffic in the SF Bay Area has become unbearable most visible hours of the day. The minute the sun rises, we are in grid lock on 880, 580, 680, 101, 84, 85, 237,....
As a Lab retiree in Livermore, I think very hard on whether I want to venture out of town on any given day. Am I up for the drive ? Got extra water ? Gas tank full ? AC working ?
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