Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
Comments
My guess is Leasure. He would be the choice for Lab operations. Of the others, only Webster has real operations. Selecting Webster would leave weapons completely leaderless.
Leasure for sure. Webster might want to wait for the contract change.
September 7, 2017 at 7:07 AM
Including being a Becthel Vice President. Bingo! Solid choice.
Alan Bishop has emerged from the dead, after years and years absolute silence we are suddenly getting these large daily emails from him on excellence, safety, security, and ethics?. Everyone finds last the last point to be a tad ironic. It looks like pure lobbying. I guess at 70+ years this is his last and only chance to be
the director for 6 months. Is Terry Wallace sending similar messages to his directorate as well? I say we do a WWE style battle royal open to PADS, ADs and DLs it could even be a pay-per view for some last bit of money for LANS.
The one choice that plain just scared me was hearing rumors that Scott Gibbs is a done deal. What an absolutely worthless non-manager and non-leader. He defers tough decisions or delegates them. As an example, he conveniently went on vacation and directed Wantuck to inform ES-division employees that he was transferring them to ADNHHO. He was personally responsible for crying to institution that he didn't have engineers to staff his nuclear facilities which literally forced engineers out of other careers across the Lab to support him and then dump them when he transferred ES-division out of ADE. He has no heuvos. None, zero, zip.
September 7, 2017 at 7:14 AM
The current LANL deputy director is too....
September 7, 2017 at 4:53 PM
The problem with Wallace and Bishop is that if they are put in for even for only 6 months that they may see utterly destroying Los Alamos as their only way to have a lasting legacy. After all in their minds when they are gone the lab is gone so they may do everything they can do make sure the lab no longer exists by the contract change. I could picture LANS going to these guys and saying "Hey we are leaving, burn this P*S to the F*ing ground, we know you are the guys that can do this for us, it is better to remembered for being truly evil than not to be remembered at all!, not to mention the all the money we will pay you. In the years ahead, people will know you and Nanos, they will have never heard of Anastsio, Hecker, Brown, and some other random guy, they will know you, so burn baby burn!!!!"
In some ways Bechtel could be sending a message to current and future employers "if you kick us out we will utterly wreck the place before we leave, so you better think twice about not giving us a contract extension, we shut down LANL before we left and we will do the same to you in a heartbeat, so do what we say and give us the MONEY, we have a monopoly so you better play ball with us or be laid to waste like LANL!"
So with that Gibbs may be ok. As I said Wallace or Bishop are truly capable of some really truly crazy stuff if they are put in even for a short time. These guys have waited all their lives for the kind of power that Nanos had and they know they may only get this one chance. Creating something is slow and takes time but destroying something can be done fast...very fast. You can make your mark by creating something big or destroying something big and these guys want to make a mark. Scary stuff.
The benifit of placing people into positions they are clearly not qualified for is company loyalty without the need of a formal "loyalty oath". However, a benefit to the company is not necessarily a benifit to the mission.
That is the person to certify the US nuclear stockpile. It is the successor to Lawrence.
T
When this happens ours have to work as designed, theirs have to be destroyed, and we need to understand the real threat that an irate nuclear rascit, nationalistic China and a opportunistic Russia will pose for counterstrikes.
Will also need to understand hardened earth physics, the limits of atmospheric modeling, radiation health physics, the limits of compeetitors scientific advisors and history.
For he will be asked, "Shall we go?"
Would this rule out John Sarrao?
September 7, 2017 at 7:46 PM
Great, another worthless figurehead. Really, Gibbs? What has he accomplished?
September 8, 2017 at 8:25 PM
Well, he stepped in, and stepped down from his AD job, to save the Security Division at LANL when Busboom and Tucker were fired for firing Walp and Doran.
Good for Busboom and Tucker!
A power-hungry egomaniac, ruthless and disingenuous, who like his mentor has been putting his name on more papers than he can read, to the rescue of a foundering weapons lab. What could go wrong?
Hmm, who could that be?
Is that you John? Or one of your boot-licking sycophants? By every objective measure theory, simulation and computing at LANL have continued circling the drain at ever-increasing speed since you've been put in charge.
September 8, 2017 at 8:25 PM
Well, he stepped in, and stepped down from his AD job, to save the Security Division at LANL when Busboom and Tucker were fired for firing Walp and Doran.
September 9, 2017 at 10:06 AM
It's sad that the only accomplishment we cite for a potential Acting Laboratory Director is for firing two people. Is that really how low our standard has become for a potential Laboratory Director?
What is required is a management team that will be at LANL for years to fix the problems. And since 1/3 of the workforce will be eligible to leave, LANL will be decimated should the NNSA continues to make bad decisions.
You (intentionally?) misread the post. No one mentioned Gibbs firing anyone. He stepped down from his AD position to take over a Division that was in shock and completely rudderless. And he did it damn well until the LANS transition, when Sowa, Killean, and Williams took over.
John has been a very typical LANS manager. Certainly not the worst of them, just very representative. You can use his example to understand how the system has been functioning here.
He was in charge of MaRIE, then cleverly handed off that hot potato to some other, unfortunate manager, moving up the ranks to run the SC programs. From there, another step up, to ADTSC. How did all those programs fare under John? For MaRIE, we discussed it here: http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/2013/03/lanl-neutron-center-ranked-at-bottom.html Don't view this as a record of failure though: the aim here is not setting up the Lab for long-term success and growth. It is much more personal: more power, more money. The ship may be sinking, but the idea is to keep climbing as fast as possible to the captain's bridge.
In fact, for the last year he's been totally consumed with positioning himself for the contract change: how to join the right team and come out on top. Blame all the failures of the last decade on "LANS", then ride to the rescue. So, no, he for sure won't take the temporary director's job now. But whatever team accepts LANS managers like him deserves to lose.
P.S. You want to get in his good graces? Some practical advice: don't try impressing him with your science. If anything that's a negative, you may be perceived as a challenger down the line. Instead, express unadulterated admiration, even reverence.
ADTSC has been doing poorly, they have lost a large number of top people in the last few years. There has been a push to hire new people to make it look like the ship is sill afloat but the new hires on average a way below the quality of the people who left. Everyone knows this but it is all about perception management. Even people who have been offered positions have turned down ADTSC for third or fourth rate places, that is how low things have gotten.
September 13, 2017 at 6:45 PM
Pattiz and UC is what happened to real Director searches.
The troubles of the past six years were brought to be by the sham search that delivered McMilan as the best available candidate. Younger would have been a better choice, but UC would have nothing to do with him and there were several much better choices that were not considered. Chu saw through the charade and correctly predicted that McMillan just was not up to the job.
September 15, 2017 at 7:25 AM
Nice!
September 15, 2017 at 7:25 AM
That is a complete lie and makes you look like a biased fool. It is not Alberstons it is Trader Joe's. You are trying to make Mike look stupid, but he is smart enough to knows that Trader Joe's has larger and cheaper selection of wine.