Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
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A lot of this sounds fishy. Sandia has some issues for sure but a number of these issues are
actually reverse from what I have heard.
Or maybe it's Hanford after reading today's post.
I think Sandia is very conservative socially so I tend to believe the blog.the question is do you have to be male christian to make it up a few levels in management?
This sounds a bit off to me, if you know what I mean.
Cliques have no place in business. Allowing them is like saying you 10 people get a good economic life and chance for advancement. You two, sorry. It's not about being naïve. It's about basic decency.
In case you haven't noticed that's how the real world works. Generally, "smarter" means "more competent." Higher competence = higher value to the employer = higher pay. Why would any employer not follow that plan?
I am sorry but this sounds very close to justification of "white male privilege". Slavery was also part most of the history of human interactions, women having less rights, also part of the most of the history of human interactions. Just because certain things have been around since the beginning of human interactions does not justify them. Who decides what merit is, who decides which
cliques are powerful, who decides who is better than others? It is the people that are already in control and they decide in such a way that keeps them in control.
Was that supposed to be a coherent post?
8/31/2019 11:21 AM
And you propose to change that by putting you in control?
Spoken like someone who has never been a manager.
9/01/2019 7:22 PM here. It appears my resume is exactly the same as yours. Go figure.
You are one of the problem managers, a "good" LANA managers does what NNSA wants, sees the writing on the wall and bends to the reality that the place has become. Sure there are a few holdout managers but they seen as problems, blacksheeps, those that do not get it. In other words not real managers.
By the way the only thing you are responsible for is to make sure there are no safety or security incidents. That is all or at least the driving force at the labs and when that is your driving force merit becomes a very odd thing to define.
9/01/2019 2:14 PM"
You have made some attempt to address the issue but it is a bit odd. A resume, at least for science or engineering is actually a very good way to hire people, it should have school, publications, grades, advisor act. If these are good it likely speaks to the persons capabilities and character. Of course letters are also valuable because it reveals more information. It is rather are to find someone with a good resume that also gets bad letters. In some cases you can have a so so resume but the letters can reveal hidden talents or potential.
In my experience the best people are now hired from outside the NNSA system where they have to respond to some kind of add. The worst people are often lab lifers, who came in as students and never left the lab systems. They figured out lab politics and become part of the systems from a very young age. Many of very weak resumes and little to no skill but have leaned the ways shmoozing and bowing down to the right managers. Failure is only defined by funding and there is always some money floating around so everyone gets funded.
The other thing these people learn is to get rid of the good people, because they are a threat. In this system you get your postmodern management which states that merit and quality are biased and have no meaning, resumes mean nothing neither do the schools the people come from. They go further and state how the world of the lab has changed and you need people that adapt to changes and nothing has any meaning anyway because the sun was in my eyes, whatever you choose it amounts to the same, absolutely nothing. So with that in mind there is no reason to hire good, people just hire bad people that suck up to management, because it does not matter, what we do does not matter, why we do it does not matter, there is only short term ease and comfort. Don't rock the boat many people have a good thing going.
So we shouldn't try to fix any problems that the world is full of? I'd guess you've never been held back by bias, so frankly, you probably don't care.
"All you can do is make the objectives such that the person making the decisions has a reason to hire good people and be successful. If he, or she, does not they will fail and be fired or if the entire organization is flawed then it will fail."
Look around at the labs. They are failing. Budget overruns on many projects, poor morale, poor management, declining benefits and pay, safety issues. Why the nation puts up with us is beyond me. Why anyone young joins the company is a real head-scratcher. Future == failure.
I'm glad to see people talking out about the problems at the different labs. It's through outside inspection that maybe things will finally improve.
Your spelling and grammar mistakes made me stop reading your post halfway through. Too bad. I hope you are not really a manager.
Thank you, and remember don't rock that boat as many people have a good thing going. The less you read, the less you know the better.
Seperate topic reply, I understand the concept described that a scientist or engineer “should” be able to be hired on a resume alone but we don’t work alone. We work as teams. Also you cannot read a persons work ethic. I have more than one personal case study where the resume and references were perfect and the employee was a dud (lazy, unskilled, or could not work in a team) and yes as the manager I take responsibility. A successful hire by resume and reference alone in my 20 years hiring well over 700 people in technical positions is less than 50%. That includes hires across all demographics. Just because some managers discriminate does not mean all do. All I’m trying to add to the conversation is that a TRUSTED reference is a very valuable predictor of outcomes and should not be thrown out as a method because some bad person became a manager and did bad things.
It seems like the whole point of the website that is referenced is that many employees ARE getting fired or forced out the door simply for speaking up. Being employed at one of the labs, I know that there is dead weight and frequently there isn't much to do about it. I also have seen a lot of people pushed out for no apparent reason. That includes solid employees.
But pushing peeps out the door in retaliation is harsh by any measure. I am becoming more of a believer in deprivatizing management of the labs. It costs $ to investigate management abuses, so a for profit company has very little incentive to do that. Until it impacts their bonuses.
Your comment is the most sensible so far! You are right about permanent dead weight
and decent people being pushed out (indirect firing). That was the case at LLNL when I was there.I should add that I am surprised why they let people in management that just don't like people.
9/03/2019 11:01 PM
You seem intelligent, so I'm going to assume that your juxtaposition of two meanings of the word "alone," pretending they are the same, is just you trying to be clever to try to hook the readers' emotions, but failing miserably. Maybe you're not as intelligent as you think you are.
"I would have to lose 60 IQ points to be classified as smart“