Steve Younger announced his retirement as Director of SNL months ago
https://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/news/2019/08/27/sandia-labs-director-stephen-younger-to-retire.html
Who will replace him? Will Honeywell promote from within as they did for their second Deputy Director? Will LLNL lose another weapons manager? Will an ex-LANS person show up again or someone recycled from NNSA? Maybe another Navy Admiral? Does it really matter?
27 comments:
I hear Charlie is interested to get back in the game.
So how was Younger at SNL? I heard he was good at NTS. At LANL he was known as a flake and kind stupid. At one time he did some reasonable science but at some point that came to end. He also came across as very insecure around real scientists. He seemed like at odd choice for Sandia. I have heard things did not get better at Sandia after the contract change but did get worse either.
As for the next SNL head, I say get a "get woke go broke" type. Full SJW-diversity type, dismantle the systems, destroy the the patriarchy and so on.
Younger was a complete failure as Sandia director. He was arrogant and capricious, acting mostly as a bully.
Under him and Honeywell, Sandia has gotten much worse and become extremely adversarial toward employees. They have helped open a gaping chasm between the rank & file staff and the management. Many of the good people at the Directors level are leaving, a real mass exodus. Sandia has basically turned into a shabby defense contractor, losing any distinction as a National Lab.
Things have gotten much much worse. Sandia was always third best and under Honeywell they are fading from that position fast.
I hear Charlie is interested to get back in the game.
11/08/2019 10:19 PM
Charlie is not coming back. One year into TRIAD and more and more is coming out just how bad LANS was, it was far worse than anyone ever thought. It was shocking just how corrupt things had been. Charlie better hope that DOE decides not to pursue legal options on some of what happened.
A pet rock would probably suffice.
As one who worked closely with Younger at LANL, I can tell you that he was not stupid. Many people he interacted with, and unfortunately many he oversaw, were simply not equipped to deal with his degree of understanding and insight into any issue brought to him, mostly before the bringer got done speaking. True, he was intolerant of fools and of apple polishers, and would not treat anyone well who appeared to be pretending more knowledge or experience than he actually possessed. To me, he was a pleasure to work with once I got past the fact that his mind was much quicker than almost anyone else's.
"As one who worked closely with Younger at LANL, I can tell you that he was not stupid. Many people he interacted with, and unfortunately many he oversaw, were simply not equipped to deal with his degree of understanding and insight into any issue brought to him, mostly before the bringer got done speaking"
Bullshit.
"True, he was intolerant of fools and of apple polishers, and would not treat anyone well who appeared to be pretending more knowledge or experience than he actually possessed. To me, he was a pleasure to work with once I got past the fact that his mind was much quicker than almost anyone else's."
Before his exit at LANL, Younger got put in T-Div and was considered a total joke. He called a meeting with some younger staff members about some silly ideas of his, we literally started laughing at the guy and I personally felt embarrassed for him. One of the older staff members told us later to take some pity on the guy. Lets put it this way we where not very tolerant of that fool. For the rest of his time he came across as very insecure and he dropped that arrogant attitude rather fast around real scientists.
I hope that what one of the previous posters said about what has happened at Sandia is as bad as that or it is fixable.
"with his degree of understanding and insight into any issue brought to him, mostly before the bringer got done speaking. True, he was intolerant of fools and of apple polishers, and would not treat anyone well who appeared to be pretending more knowledge or experience than he actually possessed."
What makes this comment so hilarious is that when he was in T-Div the only two people who interact with him and he would dote on where considered the dumbest of the dumb. These two guys could barley find the bathroom and fortunately left the lab for the land of unemployment. One of the guys was a wannabe hippie who wore a tunic, so the old timers know exactly who I am talking about ;). It was sort of hard to take Younger seriously when talked so highly of these guys. I always suspected that Younger knew exactly who these guys where but was simply using them for his own ends. He seemed to have a knack for finding the most low life sniveling sycophants. Perhaps he was not dumb but certainly not very principled. The other odd thing was his "fake" voice, which would change from high flowery praise and compliments to fake pseudo-intellectual banter. I found this ability beyond transparent and creepy. At some point he was talking to a group about some model of complex systems in which he was bragging about having over 30 parameters, at which point we had to explain him that having more the even 2 uncontrolled parameters would lead to rubbish results for rather obvious reasons. It was a weird conversation since I have never heard a scientist ever talk about models this say. The closest I have seen is that of flat earth videos with people giving some sort of 20 parameter model for a flat earth. The other strange thing is that he would try throw in random thoughts about philosophy which added nothing and in every case was actually wrong in the context of the conversion. I think he did this to try and show how smart he was. There are many more stories about this guy including how he gave some talks about simulating biological systems. His ideas fell into four classes (1) trivial, (2) wrong, (3) trivial and wrong. (4) not even wrong. I liked the time he said in 2001 that we should simulate E-coli from first principles. That was it, no reason why we should, no estimate that such a thing is impossible with current competing and foreseeable computing, which takes about 5 seconds to estimated if you know the 10^23 is much much greater than 10^7. Truly bizarre.
It is interesting that his tenure at Sandia was so short. I guess they wanted him gone.
I met Younger once and thought he was OK. He was really, really hated by the management at LLNL. If you brought up his name there’d be a negative response. He had some bad history with them when, I believe, he was at Livermore. I think he was one of the many baby boomers hired for the X-ray laser program. There were so many of those guys and their skill sets were limited. Most end up in management like Younger after the program was cancelled.
I’ll wager 5:35 is Younger.
So much vitriol aimed at Younger from people who regularly read this blog. Apparent support for the claim that he was intolerant of fools.
>>>>>a wannabe hippie who wore a tunic,
Norman Johnson!!!!! Thank God he is long gone from science. One of the saddest and most pathetic creatures to ever grace the labs. He did provide for lots of laughs though. How in hell did someone like him ever get into Los Alamos is beyond anyones guess but at least he is gone now.
Apparent support for the claim that he was intolerant of fools.
11/11/2019 5:42 PM
Or support for the claim that he was an arrogant fool. To be fair I have never seen Younger be arrogant, but rather a suck up, trying to be have bushy eager tail up in the air. I think we was trying to get back into science but it was not going very well. He always came across as phony or wannabe. I also heard that his time at LANL ended due to his behavior with WHL in which he tried to use it to his advantage but was very transparent.
I’ll wager 5:35 is Younger.
11/11/2019 4:21 PM
That is certainly possible, he would like to think of himself as some brilliant person intolerant of fools, but it was rather odd that he seemed to always have a couple of total fools he would fawn over. Of course it could be one of these guys that hang out with Younger but from what I know these people got dropped like rock after Younger found something better so you might think they figured out that it was all a sham, by maybe these guys where so clueless they never figured it out.
I’ll wager 5:35 is Younger.
11/11/2019 4:21 PM
Nope. I'm not him.
I also heard that his time at LANL ended due to his behavior with WHL in which he tried to use it to his advantage but was very transparent.
11/12/2019 7:25 AM
You heard wrong.
I also heard that his time at LANL ended due to his behavior with WHL in which he tried to use it to his advantage but was very transparent.
11/12/2019 7:25 AM
"You heard wrong.
Do you really want to go there...do you? Just let it go, He sold out LANL for his own personal gain. He sold out the US for his own gain which makes him...well you know what that makes him,..we all know what that makes him. The labs hate him for a reason. Brutus is an honorable man, Younger is honorable man, leave at that...at let us never speak of Younger again, or the damage he did to LLNl, LANL, NTS and Sandia. All intuitions which will outlive this and thrive.
Written Statement
of Stephen M. Younger
Associate Laboratory Director for Nuclear Weapons
Los Alamos National Laboratory
before the
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee
on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
"A Continuation of Oversight of the Wen Ho Lee Case"
October 3, 2000
I heard LANL's Carol Burns will be joining the Sandia team.
11/12/2019 8:20 PM
Younger's testimony was consistent with all the other LANL people who were called. Including Security, HR, Counterintelligence, and the Director. Nobody lied. WHL lied.
Carol Burns was great while I was at LANL. Hope she doesn't bring her husband.
Younger's testimony was consistent with all the other LANL people who were called. Including Security, HR, Counterintelligence, and the Director. Nobody lied. WHL lied.
11/13/2019 5:14 PM
Yes WHL lied, but Younger's testimony was not consistent, he also created all sorts of other problems which was way his time in X-Div ended. He got tossed into T but you had nothing to offer and then left. He was not very liked by anyone at LANL. He was was not liked at LLNL and now we know he was not liked at Sandia. Seems to be a trend
Carol Burns would be a great replacement for Younger.
Is Carol Burns' husband Mike Burns? If so, he is already at Sandia - he is the ALD for Division 5000.
Yep, and they were a "less than exemplary" team at LANL. Mike is no challenge to Carol's intelligence. But he's a nicer person.
:Yep, and they were a "less than exemplary" team at LANL. Mike is no challenge to Carol's intelligence. But he's a nicer person.
11/21/2019 5:35 PM"
Correct but both are much smarter than Younger so you have to figure that in.
It was announced today that Dr. James Peery will replace Dr. Younger as the Labs Director at Sandia. Dr. Peery had been the VP of Division 5000 while Sandia was managed by Lockheed Martin.
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