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!
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To do what? Seems like there are a lot of people that do not seem to do anything already. Maybe these are people are going into manufacturing or something and even there I have heard horror stories about about the efficiency of some of those projects. Seems like the more people we get the less stuff is actually done. Weird. Of course maybe I am looking at this all wrong.
I have to admit that over the years the lab just gets stranger and stranger. I know I am not the only one who sees this, but many just say, forget about it there is nothing you can do anyway so just get the money until you retire or move on.
The plan is to have like 2500 people doing telework or something. What are these people going to do? They cannot be doing classified stuff, they cannot be doing experimental stuff, they cannot be doing manufacturing, they cannot really even be doing basic science stuff, so just what the hell what are they actually doing? It kind of boggles the mind. The only thing they could be doing is HR, paper work, approving time cards or something. I guess this could be done offsite but the idea that we have 2500 people do do stuff that could be done by 150 at most is just mind blowing.
Of course I think I know what is really going on. The lab has extra money that they need to spend so they will "hire" 2000 people to do nothing but get a paycheck to hang out at home wherever that is. It is sort of like the Andrew Yang thing. The problem is the people that are still working are under a lot of pressure to make sure stuff gets done. They do not get to even leave the state of NM. The rules are that you need permission to even work out of state for more than week. Now the the 2000 teleworkers can be in Alaska, NYC, Florida or whoever to do whatever. The place is just nuts now. I can attest that there are lost of people going in and scrambling, and the is more pressure than ever on the people who can actually get stuff done right now. Again what are these people doing? Bizarre? Could it be they expect pits to be made in 5 or 10 years so they hire people now who work offsite for 7 years before they can come in and actually build stuff? I have heard a rumor that a number managers plan to do telework. So they can be in Hawaii, get a huge paycheck, never interact with anybody. I guess if it is mangers then yes maybe 2000 people is the correct number.
Again what are they all going to do?
COVID has been a godsend as it has become the crutch for all recent incompetence at LANL. And if that doesn’t work, they can still blame LANS.
??? This is a very odd statement and indicated you are unaware of what is going at the NNSA lans, DOE and in science in general.
I think you need to pay attention to all the quantum science initiatives goin on at NNSA and DOE in general. The new trend is the "quantum age". Machine learning at the labs also has a huge connection to physics in terms of development and as a new tool. The new thing will be gravity and detectors. I think most physicists would agree that we now entering the golden age of physics, not to mention the expansion of physics into all sorts of new ares of science such as biology, information sciences. economics and social networks and so on.
It is true the 2000 new people will not help you fix your computer.