I'm a foreign scientist at LANL, working only on open (non-clearance) science, and I'm leaving my scientist 2 job (early career 'permanent' position, right after post-doc) for a tenure track in academia.
Most of my early-career friends (foreign or US, 6 of the 7 early career friends I have here) are leaving or making concrete plans to leave, either to industry or to academia.
The main reason for that is that it is very difficult at LANL to work only on open science, especially as an early-career scientist. Scientist positions at LANL are soft money, meaning you must find your own funding (for all 12 months of the year, as opposed to just 3 in universities).
I would absolutely advise someone to come as a postdoc, just not so much to stay on as a scientist. I am leaving in good terms and will keep strong collaborations with LANL folks, but in my opinion it's very clear that any tenure track (in the US or not) is vastly better than a scientist position at LANL.
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I have to ask does anyone have any knowledge of the history of LANL?
Huge overhead makes it hard to compete on projects.
Being part of such a large institution forces you to contend with a lot of bureaucracy, like pointless training and cumbersome procurement.
You do not get to control your own computational resources. You cannot be an administrator on your own computer, for example.
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
Wow, Vivek Ramaswamy posts on the blog!
Unfortunately, I have partially agree that LANL scientists and engineers are now 2nd rate. I would claim the decline got going about 25-20 years. At one point LANL was the "crown jewel" of the DOE complex and did have people from top places. No one claims that anymore as LLBL, ANL, ORNL, and now PNNL are the top places. Heck even Sandia and LLNL are getting better.
I remember when the postdoc pool makeup was 50% from the top 20 schools. Sure we had plenty of foreign nationals but also some of the best US minds. Now I would guess it is less than 15 or 10 percent. Over the last 25 years the turn over rate has been pretty high with people leaving. There is also lots of grumbling amongst the lab fellows who did a study on the decline of science at the lab. They reported only on declining publications but they also discussed the decline in the quality of the people but chose not to study that that since it would be deemed too demoralizing. Another point that people discuss is that if the quality and impact basic science at LANL is declining what is happening to the programmatic science.
I am not sure the if Vivek point applies to LANL but maybe it has something to do with it.