From the horse's mouth regarding RIFs

 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.

Flooding of the Pacific Northwest

 This is very interesting -- as you know, it is not true that all of California will fall into the ocean in a major earthquake, but scientists have discovered that some parts of it indeed will:

https://scitechdaily.com/countdown-to-catastrophe-the-quake-that-could-sink-and-flood-the-pacific-northwest/

LLNL Defined Benefit Plan

Looking at the latest annual funding notice it appears that funding is down to 84% this year. There are approximately 2 retirees for every worker left on the program… not surprising since it has been closed since the transition.

The rate of return last year was 0.23%

However the number of participants has increased by 3 this year.

Federal workers reclassification

 Impact to LLNS employees?

“Trump to reclassify many federal workers, making them easier to fire”

“U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday his administration is set to change the employment classifications of tens of thousands of federal workers, a move governance experts say will make it easier to carry out more mass layoffs.”

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/04/18/trump-says-government-to-change-service-regulations-for-career-government-employees.html

Life on exoplanet

Possible signature of life on exoplanet. 

It is only 700 trillion miles from here.!

https://youtu.be/HjWwTw-zEIM?si=Beb6qEau2iTAVr4Q

Mason said?

 Mason sent an all hands out on Wed saying that lab needs to cut indirect funding and become much more efficient. The goals are to move people to direct funding but keep the same number of people. We need to stop hiring people to backfill positions. We will keep AI funding going.

So a couple of points.

(1) If this was the goal why did we have to wait 8 years to do this? It seems a bit odd that suddenly we not want to cut our crazy overheard.

(2) How on earth do you cut overhead costs when half the people at the lab are on overhead? The only way to do this is to get rid of people. Some of the more cynical are thinking we are going to fire all the science staff and move everyone on to their codes. Who knows but everyone I knows says this is simply not going work.

Rumors of layoffs

 There has been some rumors for the past few months of a voluntary separation or layoffs at LANL. On the face of it they do not seem very likely as Mason said budget wise things look good. However Mason also said that the lab needs to reduce indirect costs. I guess this has something to do with fear of Doge and reduction of overheard rates. NSF and NIH have been seen as having way to high of overhead so it seems like DOE/NNSA labs could be next. In fact there was story the other day about DOE money overhead rates needing to be cut (see link below).

This is what I think may actually be possible. DOE/NNSA will be told you need to reduce overheard or indirect costs , so they will not be able to put everybody on direct costs so they will have to let people go one way or another. Indirect costs is of course management , admins, outreach and such but also LDRD.

Here is the link on DOE cutting university overheard rates to 15%. It could be that the will do the same for NNSA. I doubt an overheard rate of only 15% is feasible because we do not have students paying tuition but they could still ask for a big cut in overheard at the NNSA labs. 50% of the lab budget is indirect right now if we have to cut 25% of our overhead rate than a layoff of 10-15% of the lab workforce could be possible. Of course it also means that LANL looks horrible because for the past 6 years we have been told to hire, hire , hire. Interview 50, hire 50 and grow. There was even some voices who said that we should not get ahead of ourselves because we do know what the next administration may want.

https://www.science.org/content/article/energy-department-cuts-university-overhead-rates-to-15-on-research-grants