LLNS may have excluded the wrong people in last VSSOP? The exclusions were based on outdated job categories and related skills. ULM are now thinking that in the future, job categories and functional areas will have to be re-defined. The next VSSOP/ISP will be based on the new categories and functional areas. The questions I have are: 1) Why didnt they think of that before the transition. It seems like their style is “change things as you go”. Planning is out the window! 2) Who will give input on the new changes? The next RIF apparently is going to be more lucrative than the VSSOP. Depending on the length of employment, a RIFed person, not only gets their 1 week pay per year of service but also from 30 to 120 days notice, essentially 30 to 120 days pay. Please feel free to comment on the rumors or add new ones you actually heard.
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On the positive side we are failing to take advantage of our positive aspects as a society. Creativity and freedom of thought breeds new ideas. Those characteristics are being crushed by caution, lack of risk taking, and bureaucratic overreach. China is winning because we have allowed ourselves to be defeated. We have failed to do the things that gave us supremacy in the first place. Chief among this is any sense of civic or societal responsibility on the part of the institutions, the corporations and ultimately the individual. The only thing that matters now is money. No other value or principle is managed or prized. Money vetos everything.
We need to stop coddling scientists in their taxpayer-funded "factory farms" and finally liberate them. True innovation, like "free-range" chicken, is just better when it has to scratch and peck for its own survival. We must remember that Albert Einstein wasn't on some cushy grant; he was a patent clerk, a true free-range mind doing world-changing physics on the side just to make rent. Once we defund the whole system, we'll have thousands of new, hungry Einsteins driving for Uber and serving lattes, their minds sharpened by the bracing air of competition. The scientific "meat" they produce will be so much leaner and more flavorful.
For decades we have been strangling the source of our scientific and technical advantage as a society. Trump walked in and shot it in the head. We were in slow decline. The system needed to be fixed. There are huge problems. If you worked at the Labs this is obvious. The change to corporate governance only accelerated the decline. The acts of the last year haven't fixed anything.
I have noticed that some young people are using AI so much that they start using the same language in everyday conversations. They keep asking variations on the same question over and over and I keep giving them the same answer and they seem confused. It is like they are changing the prompt until they get the answer they want and get frustrated when they told the same thing.