Heard this directly from a LANL director and then an NNSA chief. LANL was at 11,000 before covid but ballooned up to 16,500-17,000 due to increased spending. The staff numbers need to be cut back down to pre-covid in preparation for the contract bid in 2026. Sandia will see a 10% reduction in R&D staff.
Everyone seems to be asking for transfers to different departments or gov contract work. The contractors don’t have much work either. A lot more people should be preparing for layoffs.
If your project has no funding, you will be laid off soon.
Edit: if your project is still hiring new roles (aka not just replacing someone who left), then it has funding and you are likely safe. If you are bored at work, start applying to jobs.
Edit 2: the ISR group recently got a ‘we are going to become more efficient’ email. This is code word for a reduction in force. If you hear this kind of talk on your team, start applying to jobs.
Edit 3: some are personally offended I used the word lay off as a slang instead of the proper ‘reduction in force’ wording. I apologize for the confusion. This will be enacted via RTO, PIPs, efficiency initiatives, forced resignation, etc. there will be no mass tech industry esque layoff. This will be slow over months and will be done before the new contract bid process starts.
Edit 4: triad employees will be the most affected. Sub contracting companies will potentially have less work, but the RIF has the intended goal to reduce the number of staff working under the LANL maintenance in operations contract that is currently run by Triad. This contract is coming up for a new bid so the staff number needs to reduce in order to be more congruent with the original triad bid staffing numbers. The labs have grown faster in 4 years than it did in the past 40 years without an increase in funding or value produced to justify the growth. A lot of the LANL growth came from covid era money printing.
Comments
At LLNL, if this were to happen,
LLNS management will get an early whiff, and shuttle their “good old boys” valuable or not, to safe jobs, while other long term FTE worker bee career employees, will be put on the EIT route to unemployment, even when they could easily replace the advertised sub-contractor “buffer” employees. If you’re an FTE LLNS “career employee” and accepted employment at LLNL based on an advertised job security buffer (sub-contractors fired first), you’ve been hoodwinked deluxe, and arguably this is a breach of contract.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Ask around for yourself if you don’t believe it has happened before at LLNL.
Please rephrase and add some context, because your comment appears to pivot away from the LLNS layoff/RIF topic by way of “no name calling” blog violation. I guess this topic struck a nerve with you. Fine, just please refrain from name calling.
We all saw the email. Idk why so many are worried about their jobs. Parking and commute sucks. And I never see my kids and I’m exhausted. Please put me out of my misery.
LANL 315
LLNL 78
SNL 72
LLNL last year had cutbacks due to NIF funding, this year it has been the LEP program.
half leaves due to lack of housing, terrible work conditions, and overly bureaucratic management.
Why on earth would you apply to LANL? Is this a joke? Housing is horrible in Los Alamos. As for the work conditions I have not seen at as much better than Sandia or LLNL. The bureaucracy is beyond crazy at LANL.
All 3-4 labs have the same bureaucracies just a slightly different flavor, all management comes from the same mold and the same organization pulling the strings you are not getting around that.
Idk a home in Livermore that sells for 2 million is 700k in Los Alamos. "
Not true, maybe 2 million to 1 million.
I am not sure where you are getting your numbers but Condos in Los Alamos are 650k and a nice family home is 900k, although there are bidding wars for every house with up to 10% increase.
I am not saying housing is better in Livermore but in general Los Almaos is now about half of what you find for a good city in California.
There is reddit after reddit about the housing in Los Almaos. The other issue
is you have to live in Los Almaos. Sure there are some nice trails but the town is beyond horrible at this point and is on rapid decline. No doctors, no restaurants, the supermarket is horrible, no plumber, no service and so on. The huge influx of PIT work has really changed the town. Also oddly enough they had to hire a huge amount of support staff at LANL, and they just hired any body so all the local service workers just transferred to LANL
so the town has a huge problem with local services. This is not to mention that the intellectual aspect of the town as changed substantially form 10 years ago. It does seem more like you are in a manufacturing or industrial town not a science lab town.
Traffic is crazy, with much more aggressive drivers in pickups, more road rage, car crashes, flights in the supermarket, and a lot more drugs in the town
four letters words just thrown around in front of kids and so on. It is not the same place it use to be.
Your housing numbers are insanely off.
Look at Zillow a nice family home is 850k in Los alamos, condos about 600k. Tiny 1 bed homes 350k. Also it is well known that the NM has very poor healthcare.
https://sourcenm.com/2024/06/17/lack-of-both-healthcare-workers-and-infrastructure-hurting-new-mexicans-access-to-medical-care/
Los Almos has also lost a number doctors, and everyone complains about the health care in the town. I suspect that you do not actually live in Los Alamos. Are you just troll trying to start a fight on the blog by just making stuff up?
Not very hard to check
https://www.zillow.com/los-alamos-nm/
523k for a condo
920k for a 2800 sqf family home
590 for a condo
690k for 1600 sf home
850k for 2800 sqf
360k for 1 bd 710 squad foot home. (Not a family home)
Dude you are not getting it. Zillow does "rip" people off it is what the houses are selling for. In case you did not notice LANL hired thousands and thousands of people. That has a tendency to drive up housing.
"Yes, I said before that compared to 15 years ago, prices are quite a bit higher but not as extreme as being mentioned."
Again all you have to to do is check the real estate listing in town. Those are the prices. Every council meeting people are complaining about housing.
The health care cost in New Mexico is one of the worst in the nation. Again
all well documented.
The town has declined for a number of reasons. The biggest is that the lab simply grew too big and the type of worker has changed. The number of doctors has not changed but has declined. The number of stores has declined,
the number of restaurants has declined. Housing has gone way up, but try getting any kind of service for your home.
Is the goal of working at LANL just to afford a place to live and a nice car?
The vast majority of people at LANL do not have a nice car. They either have the beater they have had since grad school, a subaru, or a swasticar. Now there is an influx of pickups.
And yeah, cost of living is a huge problem in all of Northern NM. ABQ at least has the slums. But LA/SF are probably more staffed by folk from Espanola and Pojaque than not these days. Which is "great" for people getting ground down by capitalism. Less so for people who spent 4-10 years getting a degree and desperately want to use it and live comfortably.
Which is the reality. People don't work at LANL for the money... outside of immediately after grad school. They do it because they want to do research that aligns with their doctoral work or because they want a factory job that lets them stay close to family in Northern NM. They make enough to live comfortably and work for the weekend. And a tiny select few do it because they truly Believe In The Mission and feel that rus-err, Canada is the greatest threat humanity has ever seen and a nuclear deterrent is all that is protecting our women.
But yes, housing here is outrageous for what you get. Limited supply. Most is old. But, folks move here for a number of reasons. If you don't like the work you are doing. then move or get another job if you can. That applies to any job, anywhere.
I spoke with a realtor a few months ago and he had internal data showing that houses that sold within 2 weeks of listing were typically going for 6-9% over list. Houses listed under market often had 20 or more offers.
Mean house price in 2023 was 570k, median was 550k. Depending on where you are on the east coast this may not be shocking. That said, what you get for 550k might be worse than what you get in Virginia or something.
Note there are really few places to buy or rent because everything comes off the market almost instantly...
Housing prices up 75% since 2018 (RIP our chances of buying here)
67% of Lab workers = forced to commute
We need 1,300-2,400 new housing units by 2029
Current density = too low to support decent bus service
Ones to avoid: Anything privately offered. landlords here are mostly bad people. Also avoid apartment complexes. They charge high rates for crappy apartments. Actually, just avoid Los Alamos county in general. Find something in a good town somewhere that has reasonable housing. If you can get hired at lanl you can get hired at Livermore, oak ridge, Argon, or any of the sites in better places!
There are people on 4/10s who rent a nearby bedroom (or a couch) for 3 nights a week. There are a lot of subcontractors whose contracts call for them to be at the Lab 2 weeks a month and wherever else they want to be for the other 2 weeks (or some similar arrangements).
LA and the pretty scenery aren't why a lot of people come here and stay here for their careers. Many of us really do still believe in the lab mission. Same at LLNL and the other labs in the complex. We get ground down daily by the endless training, seemingly uncaring management and assorted administrative BS . And yes, we do get to help protect the women with nukes. Same with the men, the kids, the parents, the grandparents and their grandkids. As naive as it sounds, many of us work and live here because we think there's still value in the country and in protecting the country. We don't do it for whomever is in charge of the current administration or our favorite political party or ideology of the month. Certainly not for the contractor who administers the lab for the country. LANL (and LLNL) are evolving entities that are unique places with unique histories and dedicated people that's taken decades to build. Tough as it is sometimes to work here, the careers that you can build really can't happen anywhere else.
I agree but the thing that is most depressing is that 20 years ago everyone believed in the mission and saw it as a higher calling, and was very proud to be part of excellence. Today it seems like most see it as just a job, and you get paid if things work or they do not work. The goal is to to do the minima and live for every Friday off and every weekend. It is good pay for work that is not that intense compared to industry, academics and other DOE labs, but it no longer offers that "cutting edge" or elite status that it once had. Back in 2000 during the WHL issue DOE officials said that LANL was the "Crown Jewel" of the entire DOE complex which was true by a number of metrics. Now no one would say this today, as LBNL, ANL, ORNL and PPNL are have surpassed LANL. It is even worse than that because LANL is much larger. Sure life is easier LANL and are compared to these other labs in terms of work but this was not the case 25 years ago. Over the years lots of LANL staff have left for these labs but almost no one from these labs have come to LANL.
No one says this publicly but the quality of the workforce has drastically declined. There are even some studies on this, LANL no longer has the best and brightest nor does it have the culture where this is fostered. It took a long time to reach this point and the decline got going with Nanos, followed by Bechtel and so forth but here we are.
That being said I know for a fact that there are still plenty of people that believe in the mission and understand the value of LANL, work hard have pride in their work but at the same time the decline of the institute is hard to deny.
A lot of people blame "PITs", I am not sure I buy that. Rocky Flats, had only 1800 people and could build more pits than we ever intend to do at LANL. I would think LANL could do that has well without changing the entire culture of the lab by hiring 8000 people. Also if anybody knows anything about Rockey Flats they in fact did have some excellence science. I simply do not understand the argument that PIT production cannot coexist with other NNSA science.
However, lets be real, the quality of engineers and scientists at any lab that requires security clearance has universally declined. Americans just don't get PhDs anymore, they go into medicine, silicon valley or Wall Street. This has been getting worse and worse for at least two decades. It's not so much just a LANL thing.
Lastly, yes, the pit work has brought in the big truck crowd that is more than happy to speed down the road, run a red light and drive you off the road. That is unfortunate, but visit any big city and its far worse than Los Alamos. The quality of drivers has declined everywhere in the past 30 years.
I understand this but, why do we need twice the people to do work 5-10 times a slower rate? I would understand if say the same number of people as Rocky Flats at the slower rate for more safety but this is just crazy. (1) Either they do not know what they are doing, (2) this is a huge scam to make money to hire as many people as possible. (3) The bureaucracy is beyond huge and nothing can be done. (4) A combination of all of these.
It seems like we have had an enough time at LANL and Savannah River to get idea if this is really ever going to work at the level they hope or even a fraction of that.
How do you see that? The comments look very well thought and clear and certainly are not based on ignorance. There are many reason for the current conditions at Los Alamos and the town, and it would be beyond "ignorant" to deny this. In fact I know very few LANL people that would deny this. I am going to be charitable and assume you are long since retired? Am I right?
Also you seem to be way of base in your statements about housing, traffic and the town. That is a pretty basic we just have way too many people for the town, so yes housing will be tough, this trickles down to town services, who can live in Los Alamos and who the town can hire. Nothing very shocking or surprising about what people are saying.
Your post bashes Los Alamos more than any other poster. I think I see you game now ;)
"My oncologist died of cancer,"
Hmm
How are you not long since retried? The problem I keep hearing from young people is that cannot a doctor in Los Alamos who is taking new patients. More doctors are leaving or test that you use to do in Los Alamos you can no longer do. I am glad it is working fine for you but it is not what I am hearing from other people in the town. There is whole reddit pages just on Los Alamos complaining about the health care, housing , traffic and services. It is not Los Alamos bashing it is just a fact.