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Friday, August 8, 2025
Will this ever happen at LLNL?
How ‘The Great Flattening Trend’ Could Affect Your Workplace
After the last middle manager is extinct in the wild there will be these isolated islands called LLNL and LANL where they will alive and well. Just as life will find a way middle management will find a way .
In short there is no way that will work at NNSA labs. The number of managers and there compensation has just grown.
Under Hecker we called it, “flatland”. He had the good sense to eliminate the upper management, though. It worked well until Nanos instituted fake shutdowns and idiotic bureaucracy in order to claim management had too much span of control necessitating smaller groups and more managers to scold the few remaining workers for not having enough ladder training.
The problem at LANL isn't too many formal managers, it's the explosive growth of paper pushing, box checking oversight, regulatory and compliance people--also known as indirect staff. They are completely divorced from the mission and any shared purpose or goal. They all exist in separate divisions that have no stake in the operation. I'd estimate that under 20% of LANL employees actually perform any "hands on" programmatic or mission work now. The rest don't see their job's purpose as being to help you get anything done, but to the contrary, to exist as a roadblock and provide no helpful insight or feedback. Most are so poorly educated and unskilled that they don't even understand what the lab does and couldn't help if they wanted to. They are mostly incapable or afraid to check a box because they don't know how to do their own job, bringing the rest of the operation to a halt. It's gotten so bad that NNSA might as well take the $6B a year they are giving LANL and instead open up a Universal Basic Income pilot program for the state of NM or perhaps burn the cash to produce energy for oil and gas extraction or just to heat the homes of unemployed people in the state. Too bad management and NNSA doesn't seem to care. As long as the gravy train keeps chugging, it's business as usual.
Speaking of LLNS, just look at the machine shops, more managers that actual people performing work in the main complex… hence why I sent all of my work to other labs in the complex.
Back in March Mason said that the lab needs to become more efficient and we have too many people on indirect funding. Well six months latter and things seem worse in the sense that we have even more paper work, things are much slower and much more uncertain. Also it seems like there are even more managers and extra non-technical staff now. We seem to be doing the opposite, the science and technical staff is getting squeezed harder. People are now spending more and more time chasing small amounts of money to get by. We keep getting highlights about " welcome the new deputy group leader of paper work and resource allocations, who replaces so and so and so who is now moving up was new group leader of the newly formed AI budget and resource division with two people. We will having a search for his new deputy and the new program manager for the anticipated information and resource AI effort that we expect could happen in the next few years." Travel is becoming a nightmare and more and more operations simply no long work. Oddly even though more and more people are being hired it seems like we shifting back to having people working offsite sense we do not have the parking. The problem is the offsite support staff are not actually workings so the "Monday to Wed" is my offsite work hours person nothing will happen Mon to Wed. They show up Thurs but are slammed with all the stuff they need to get done. Every Friday is a day off now. Now things were like this in 2024 but 2025 we seem to be in turbo overdrive for inefficiencies. Mason said that the lab has just way too much to do but it seems like the bigger we get the slower we become. Maybe we crossed the lines of diminishing returns.
The LANL bureaucracy has been fighting back ever since Mason said that the pool of parasitic sucker fish known as indirect staff needs to shrink. The recent decision to require 100% export control review, agree with it or not, was entirely motivated by the export control office's concern that they would otherwise be on the chopping block. There have been other similar decisions throughout the lab by similar oversight and regulatory groups. Every indirect group or division is coming out with a litany of upgraded rules and requirements designed to protect their jobs. It's not an exaggeration to say that we are, rather ironically, now on a path to replace the pit mission with a compliance mission because of the sudden and newfound interest in efficiency. After the inauguration, management has suddenly found Jesus, but the forces of Satan, aka indirect staff, are not going to go quietly.
Last week Mason had a an update. He said that LANL will not be encouraging more onsite work.
Look I have no issue if you can work offsite and do a good job. I know a few people that do this and if they can do this even better offsite great. However this is less than 10 percent of the people that work offsite. Most do a subpar job and I bet 25 percent do absolutely nothing. We have some people that show up 2 days a month and I think that is the only days they work. No one says anything.
Over the years the lab has just gotten much slower, weirder and less efficient. It comes in waves, the first jump up was WHL in 2000. The next was with Nanos 2005. After that was Bechtel which had two periods one right when they got in and another around 2014. It was steady for some time and in 2000 we had Covid. Again 2023 with mass hire, and now in 2025 with Trump and push for AI. I am not alone in this all sorts of staff are now saying they simply cannot get much done anymore due to the crazy paper work, team members not being onsite, managers and staff not responding, issues with maintenance, and charge codes not going far enough any more so huge amounts of time are spent on chasing small bits of money. I get why so many staff are so mentally checked out and will be happy just to stay home.
Please fire your compliance staff. When the multi-million fines come in, the incident investigations start, and your storage rooms start filling up with waste because you royally messed up and no one will accept your waste anymore, go cry to someone else that you have no idea what you are doing. Saying compliance staff don't know what they are doing or care about the mission flies in the face of all the bureaucratic bullshit we have to deal with so that our engineers, scientists and tradesmen can do their jobs without worrying about getting hit with multi-million dollar fines, accident investigations and root cause analysis. If you want to change something, change the rules, and maybe the complaince side of things will fix themselves. In the meantime, meet your compliance staff, get to know them, and learn what they do and what they need to help them be effective and keep your work moving forward. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
“The LANL bureaucracy has been fighting back ever since Mason said that the pool of parasitic sucker fish known as indirect staff needs to shrink.”
FYI: Prior to the UC/LLNL to LLNS change, the powers at be, considered keeping the Science and Engineering departments under UC management, and subcontracting all other areas, including HR, security, etc.
"The LANL bureaucracy has been fighting back ever since Mason said that the pool of parasitic sucker fish known as indirect staff needs to shrink. The recent decision to require 100% export control review, agree with it or not, was entirely motivated by the export control office's concern that they would otherwise be on the chopping block. There have been other similar decisions throughout the lab by similar oversight and regulatory groups. Every indirect group or division is coming out with a litany of upgraded rules and requirements designed to protect their jobs. It's not an exaggeration to say that we are, rather ironically, now on a path to replace the pit mission with a compliance mission because of the sudden and newfound interest in efficiency. After the inauguration, management has suddenly found Jesus, but the forces of Satan, aka indirect staff, are not going to go quietly. 8/11/2025 5:03 AM"
This may explain a lot of other things. We had some external contracts which in the past was reasonably smooth with the LANL paper work. This past 4 months it has turned into a horrific nightmare where they inset on on these crazy checks, redo the checks, repeat, bring in lab legal, and add another oversight group and so on and it never gets done. We have never experienced anything like it before. One of the team members said it may be them trying to say how important the are and creating more work to say how busy. I thought this was bit far fetched but I keep hearing this from other people in other parts of the lab. I think you may be on to something, and could explain the sudden slow down and barrage or weird procedures that appeared out nowhere.
13 comments:
More like Isla Nublar
After the last middle manager is extinct in the wild there will be these isolated islands called LLNL and LANL where they will alive and well. Just as life will find a way middle management will find a way .
In short there is no way that will work at NNSA labs. The number of managers and there compensation has just grown.
Under Hecker we called it, “flatland”. He had the good sense to eliminate the upper management, though. It worked well until Nanos instituted fake shutdowns and idiotic bureaucracy in order to claim management had too much span of control necessitating smaller groups and more managers to scold the few remaining workers for not having enough ladder training.
The problem at LANL isn't too many formal managers, it's the explosive growth of paper pushing, box checking oversight, regulatory and compliance people--also known as indirect staff. They are completely divorced from the mission and any shared purpose or goal. They all exist in separate divisions that have no stake in the operation. I'd estimate that under 20% of LANL employees actually perform any "hands on" programmatic or mission work now. The rest don't see their job's purpose as being to help you get anything done, but to the contrary, to exist as a roadblock and provide no helpful insight or feedback. Most are so poorly educated and unskilled that they don't even understand what the lab does and couldn't help if they wanted to. They are mostly incapable or afraid to check a box because they don't know how to do their own job, bringing the rest of the operation to a halt. It's gotten so bad that NNSA might as well take the $6B a year they are giving LANL and instead open up a Universal Basic Income pilot program for the state of NM or perhaps burn the cash to produce energy for oil and gas extraction or just to heat the homes of unemployed people in the state. Too bad management and NNSA doesn't seem to care. As long as the gravy train keeps chugging, it's business as usual.
“In short there is no way that will work at NNSA labs. The number of managers and there compensation has just grown.”
Yes, most notably in 2008, when LLNS laid off over a 100 FTEs so LLNS could bring in more outside Bechtel managers.
Speaking of LLNS, just look at the machine shops, more managers that actual people performing work in the main complex… hence why I sent all of my work to other labs in the complex.
Back in March Mason said that the lab needs to become more efficient and we have too many people on indirect funding. Well six months latter and things seem worse in the sense that we have even more paper work, things are much slower and much more uncertain. Also it seems like there are even more managers and extra non-technical staff now. We seem to be doing the opposite, the science and technical staff is getting squeezed harder. People are now spending more and more time chasing small amounts of money to get by. We keep getting highlights about " welcome the new deputy group leader of paper work and resource allocations, who replaces so and so and so who is now moving up was new group leader of the newly formed AI budget and resource division with two people. We will having a search for his new deputy and the new program manager for the anticipated information and resource AI effort that we expect could happen in the next few years." Travel is becoming a nightmare and more and more operations simply no long work. Oddly even though more and more people are being hired it seems like we shifting back to having people working offsite sense we do not have the parking. The problem is the offsite support staff are not actually workings so the "Monday to Wed" is my offsite work hours person nothing will happen Mon to Wed. They show up Thurs but are slammed with all the stuff they need to get done. Every Friday is a day off now. Now things were like this in 2024 but 2025 we seem to be in turbo overdrive for inefficiencies. Mason said that the lab has just way too much to do but it seems like the bigger we get the slower we become. Maybe we crossed the lines of diminishing returns.
Sounds like LANL needs to hire more construction workers and less paperwork creators to grade some more parking spaces.
The LANL bureaucracy has been fighting back ever since Mason said that the pool of parasitic sucker fish known as indirect staff needs to shrink. The recent decision to require 100% export control review, agree with it or not, was entirely motivated by the export control office's concern that they would otherwise be on the chopping block. There have been other similar decisions throughout the lab by similar oversight and regulatory groups. Every indirect group or division is coming out with a litany of upgraded rules and requirements designed to protect their jobs. It's not an exaggeration to say that we are, rather ironically, now on a path to replace the pit mission with a compliance mission because of the sudden and newfound interest in efficiency. After the inauguration, management has suddenly found Jesus, but the forces of Satan, aka indirect staff, are not going to go quietly.
Last week Mason had a an update. He said that LANL will not be encouraging more onsite work.
Look I have no issue if you can work offsite and do a good job. I know a few people that do this and if they can do this even better offsite great. However this is less than 10 percent of the people that work offsite. Most do a subpar job and I bet 25 percent do absolutely nothing. We have some people that show up 2 days a month and I think that is the only days they work. No one says anything.
Over the years the lab has just gotten much slower, weirder and less efficient. It comes in waves, the first jump up was WHL in 2000. The next was with Nanos 2005. After that was Bechtel which had two periods one right when they got in and another around 2014. It was steady for some time and in 2000 we had Covid. Again 2023 with mass hire, and now in 2025 with Trump and push for AI. I am not alone in this all sorts of staff are now saying they simply cannot get much done anymore due to the crazy paper work, team members not being onsite, managers and staff not responding, issues with maintenance, and charge codes not going far enough any more so huge amounts of time are spent on chasing small bits of money. I get why so many staff are so mentally checked out and will be happy just to stay home.
Please fire your compliance staff. When the multi-million fines come in, the incident investigations start, and your storage rooms start filling up with waste because you royally messed up and no one will accept your waste anymore, go cry to someone else that you have no idea what you are doing. Saying compliance staff don't know what they are doing or care about the mission flies in the face of all the bureaucratic bullshit we have to deal with so that our engineers, scientists and tradesmen can do their jobs without worrying about getting hit with multi-million dollar fines, accident investigations and root cause analysis. If you want to change something, change the rules, and maybe the complaince side of things will fix themselves. In the meantime, meet your compliance staff, get to know them, and learn what they do and what they need to help them be effective and keep your work moving forward. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
“The LANL bureaucracy has been fighting back ever since Mason said that the pool of parasitic sucker fish known as indirect staff needs to shrink.”
FYI: Prior to the UC/LLNL to LLNS change, the powers at be, considered keeping the Science and Engineering departments under UC management, and subcontracting all other areas, including HR, security, etc.
"The LANL bureaucracy has been fighting back ever since Mason said that the pool of parasitic sucker fish known as indirect staff needs to shrink. The recent decision to require 100% export control review, agree with it or not, was entirely motivated by the export control office's concern that they would otherwise be on the chopping block. There have been other similar decisions throughout the lab by similar oversight and regulatory groups. Every indirect group or division is coming out with a litany of upgraded rules and requirements designed to protect their jobs. It's not an exaggeration to say that we are, rather ironically, now on a path to replace the pit mission with a compliance mission because of the sudden and newfound interest in efficiency. After the inauguration, management has suddenly found Jesus, but the forces of Satan, aka indirect staff, are not going to go quietly.
8/11/2025 5:03 AM"
This may explain a lot of other things. We had some external contracts which in the past was reasonably smooth with the LANL paper work. This past 4 months it has turned into a horrific nightmare where they inset on on these crazy checks, redo the checks, repeat, bring in lab legal, and add another oversight group and so on and it never gets done. We have never experienced anything like it before. One of the team members said it may be them trying to say how important the are and creating more work to say how busy. I thought this was bit far fetched but I keep hearing this from other people in other parts of the lab. I think you may be on to something, and could explain the sudden slow down and barrage or weird procedures that appeared out nowhere.
It all kind of makes sense now.
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