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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With respect to this blog, LLNL like other national laboratories, are managed by contractors like LLNS, for a period of 15-20 years straight. Here “shifting consumer demands” is irrelevant, because the feedback loop is extremely long, and the only “consumer” is DOE/NNSA that can and is frequently negotiated with to shape said “demand”. Within these 15-20 year time scales, a business philosophy or direction, is free to turn inward, especially with for-profit contractors.
6/25/2023 8:53 AM
I wish that were the case. Some managers, not all by far, are fully aware of what they are doing, and march forward at the expense of LLNS employees and to their personal $ benefit.
So as the saying goes, either one can be part of the solution or be part of the problem. An “I don’t have a role as a manager ” is more for their own accountability excuse than anything else. It is kind of you to give them the benefit of the doubt, but usually it does not pan out with these for-profits.
"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."
-Winston Churchill
Isn't there some Glassdoor survey claiming that the national labs are actually better places to work than the troubled outside world?
A positive LLNS Glassdoor survey? Years back the NNSA initiated a comprehensive LLNS internal employee survey task with ample advance notice to complete it online by a certain date. Even with the frequent Lab reminders to complete the employee survey by the due date, LLNS employee survey participation, was unexplainably low. Were LLNS employees fearful of being identified in an online internal employee survey, and how does that wash with a Glassdoor survey?
LANS did a employee survey and it was total disaster for LANS. They never did that again and even tried to hide the results. When they finally made them publish they highlighted only a few points, like "employees feel the mission is important" "what is done in LANL is valuable" They left out all the points that said, management was horrible, management does not care about the mission and management places profit above security and safety. I heard that the company that created the survey and surveys like this where shocked at the responses and had never seen anything like this before. Even the state of NM was blinded by the survey. It was all highlighted on this blog years ago . I believe that this was one of the catalysts for NNSA thinking contract change was on order.
One thing was the LANS survey had very high participation rate, 75% or more. Around 2014 the jig was kind of up for LANS. They said they would save money by improving business practices and yet business practices become worse under LANS both in terms of costs and time. No one could understand what LANS had done to improve anything. The higher level managers just went on and on about the bonuses they would get but never engaged with the workforce about how to actually improve things. All you got was "we are for profit entity, we are in a new reality, perception is all that matters for getting a bonus, the world is different now, we can never go back, the world has changed... and so on" I remember when the contract was lost how they actually had all these crying people in the admin building, they really bought into "it is all perception now". LANS become a weird little island to itself for several years, a isolated echo chamber of self promotion. NNSA figured out very rapidly it was not going to work but it takes some time to before they could get rid of LANS.
Only the very gullible fell for that or the very self-centered who cared about advancing their career.
Example: they tell you they care about work-life balance. The reality is you have to work until you drop to keep up!
It was pure BS.
Bechtel: you have no place in a national lab.
I saw this too. Some “fair weather” LLNS employees sold out to LLNS management deluxe knowing some of their fellow employees would get crushed. Sad to see, but the best plan forward is to seek out a better and non-profit contractor to manage LLNL. Move forward, consider “lessons learned”, and make LLNL a better place again.