I was just watching a show about what happens to society when switches from being meritocracy based to being ideologically based. They used the example of Nazi Germany which resulted in the huge exodus of talent from Germany since they switched to everything being about what group you belong to and race rather than about ability. They discussed how the same thing is happening now and even mentioned how if critical race theory comes back to national research labs and intelligence agencies that a number of people particularly the best people will simply leave since the best people have the most options. It does seem ironic that push for extreme racial identity and how race determines all issues has more common with Nazi ideology than liberal ideology.
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LANL now has a talk series on being anti-racist. It is not enough to be non-racists one must be active in rooting it out and destroying it. It also states that one cannot be racist against whites. Change the language a bit and you have Germany 1938.
2/11/2021 8:56 PM"
Is this a joke? In fact LANL and LLNL have pointed out that the loss of mid career talent is a serious issue. I am not sure what part of the lab you are in but this is a real issues. I know many such people that have left and the main reason has been the various issues with the labs that make them not as attractive as before. Unfortunately the new hires are not "on average" of the same level of staff we used to get. I am also not sure what you mean by "pale" people as the people that have been leaving come from a rather wide variety of backgrounds including Asian, Indian, Middle Easten, Eastern Europe, Hispanic, and so on. It is more of a talent issue not a racial or ethnic issue.
The point is is that if you start adding more crazy ideas such as CRT, ect to the lab you just going to create conditions that will cause more people to leave, the most talented have the most options so they are the most often to leave.
"Pale people" and non-pale people leave the lab for many reasons. In your view, why are "pale people" leaving the lab if disproportionate to others? Did you know that "pale people" as you put it, especially ex-military, get the express track to Supervision in Engineering and that many "pale people" as you put it, techs, don't want to work for non-pale supervisors at the Lab? Do you think its remotely possible that minorities at the Lab are swimming against the tide? Food for thought.
As an newly-minted graduate at the labs you will be, at best, making 70-80% of what your new grad peers are making at companies like Microsoft and Google. That disparity only grows with time, since promotions and career progression are much slower in the lab ecosystem; at 5 years in, leaving for industry might double your yearly compensation in a single move. Stacked against that, all the national labs have is work-life balance. Why wouldn't a talented, fast-moving engineer leave for greener pastures?
Also, newsflash for the whining Lab lifers: leave for any big corporation nowadays, and you will likely run into diversity training programs - and unlike the lab's optional "workshops", theirs are a mandatory and yearly requirement.
People and businesses are leaving California for states that have lower home prices, lower taxes, and increasingly, those are red states. More than half of LLNS employees are under TCP2/401k now and those retirement funds are portable. It is unreasonable to expect to attract and retain top talent with declining benefits, fluctuating budgets, annual continuing resolutions, and "various issues" that were not as prevalent prior to the contract transition. For Lab 20 and 30 somethings especially those without family in the area, moving to greener pastures is understandable. Is the so called CA exodus a short term trend or have we reached a tipping point?
This also agrees with the point that policies can lead to brain drain. Lots of companies are leaving California due to high taxes, anti-business practices, high home prices and now lower quality of life with increased homelessness, crime, trash, and riots. Now the quality of schools is starting to decline for PC reasons. Just last week in the bay area they voted to eliminate grades as way to evaluate if students can get into certain programs.
2/13/2021 7:25 AM
News Flash ! The quality of California schools has been declining for years, ever since their pre-VietNam era peak. The handwriting was on the wall when students began evaluating the profs, instead of doing their homework. It all trickled down to the grammar schools, trashing what was once the best public education system in the country.
2/13/2021 3:31 PM
They paid most of your taxes. Pretty soon CA is going to run out of other people's money. End of the "Golden State."
They might roll their eyes, but they do not see this as an affront to their identity or a hindrance to their scientific progress.
There are plenty of reasons why young scientists are leaving (e.g. cost of living) and those are problematic and must be addressed, but diversity training isn't it.
The issue is when these woke issues starts to be a hindrance to their scientific progress. We are starting to see some this already with how grants are chosen, who gets promoted, who gets awards ect. We are also starting to see this in the subject matter itself. For example the latest group to come under scrutiny are evolutionary biologists, as the woke crowd is starting to claim that evolution is eugenics and that it emphases that for many species that there is in fact a sexual binary. I am not kidding about this, there was recent conversation that evolution biology, theory of evolution and eugenics are the same exact thing and must be stopped. We are now starting to see the far left merging with the extreme religious right agreeing that evolution is wrong. I know this sounds nuts but mark my words in a year or two you will start seeing things like dinosaurs are fake because white males where so interested in digging them up, and a few of the "woke" have mentioned this.