Jul 1, 2007

Senior management left us almost completely directionless

An interesting thread is being pursued on the Listen, Learn, React post.

Taking a momentary detour from the predominant hand-wringing theme of the pending reduced benefits at LLNL, a poster makes an unusually enlightened comment about post-UC, early LANS upper management at LANL.

--Gussie

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If I might ride 7/1/07 1:11 PM's horse a little further, LANL/LANS senior management left us almost completely directionless after at least two years of no major program development [referring, or course, to the two years surrounding Nanos' famous shutdown of LANL]. Once they started writing the proposals in ernest in 2005, they knew who was in and who was out in the coming years. Upper management spent all of 2006 and this year retiring, moving, rearranging the deck chairs, etc, saving their own skins, but they were not apparently back East promoting ours.

Without strong program development helping guide Congress and DOE in the right directions, we're now at the mercy for major existing program cuts. Congress now has the perception that the work we do is no longer important.

Hence every minor event will be greatly magnified and used to beat us further. Simply apologizing at every turn and promising more controls only increases the feeding frenzy. It may be too late to get effective senior management in place that can swing the tide of opinion and promote in the Halls of Congress what is good about LANL.




19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Atwhat point does Mikey start "shit-canning" some of his major "Ineffective Team Members" such as "Slick Wille Gibbs" Sue, and the rest? Maybe he should be the first to go....Re-Organization at the top.....(Oh course we all know it's too late the ship is half way under water........

Anonymous said...

"No Planned RIF'S...Oh dear lets see how long the planning stage lasts for the coming storm...Remember Poor planning is no excuse........

Dr. Strangelove said...

Our division and program management is still faithfully tilting windmills back in DC and even other places.

Mikey and many of the other ADs may be entirely in CYA mode or retreat or as suggested by Gussie, re-arranging deck chairs, but my guys are still bringing home new money and occasionally new (to us) sponsors.

So while the ship may be sinking, there are a few folks up the food chain still bailing...

- Doc

BTW.. We're BAAAAACK!

Anonymous said...

4:26 pm, Don't forget to add Terry to the list - he does not give a shit about science or the people at LANL. He is only in it for himself and those that kiss his rear end. He has screwed over more people at LANL - he made numerous promises before June 1, 2006 and then once the day came he refused to honor his word. He let a lot of us down, particularly with respect to programs. I hope he is enjoying his lofty position and his new office with the view of all the people he has lied to get there.

Anonymous said...

Beason was absent most of the last year. He spent as much time working on the Livermore proposal and fulfilling outside committments as he spent working at LANL.

Anonymous said...

Same goes for Mikey - I heard he was gone 4/5 days a week to help with the LLNL proposal. Nice, eh? Really shows which lab he cares about. Oh my! Maybe those RRW rumors were true ...

Anonymous said...

Beason is around once in awhile. When he is he sends out an e mail with his reading and movie recomendations. Like, does this guy have a clue. He is laughing all the way to the bank for sure. Burns runs TR... my guess is he will get fed up soon and split. Then there is Fazio, the old ISR leader now off somewhere useless and lives in ABQ too, along with Beason. Only makes it close to LA to jog or go to the SF opera. Yup, real top performers!

Anonymous said...

Burns runs TR for sure, but does not get the credit. And the dickens of it is ... is that Anstasio is too stupid to realize it. They keep Beason on while TR gets run into the ground. Many people have bailed for this reason alone. Way to go Mikey A! Woo hoo. Run LANL into the ground and let the loosers stay in power while you are consumed with how to better position LLNL. Where is Congress now?

Anonymous said...

At the TSM level, we are constantly pushed now to go find new funding. But bringing in WFO is difficult, as discussed elsewhere in this blog, such as (click here) and the subsequent posts. For all of its lip-service encouragement, WFO is de facto discouraged, until such time that this same senior management makes a commitment to support it.

But again, no leadership here. Wallace did bring "science projects" down 2% in G&A and felt very proud, but he missed the big picture that the WFO costs are still enormous, overhead costs are being moved to direct charges, WFO is still padded with 2% additional G&A (yes, subtract, then add 2% for science WFO), uninvolved project offices tack on surcharges, and DOE adds an additional final tax for the privilege of allowing WFO in.

So how is the lab to go into sustained or new directions, when the top management won't promote and develop the large programs, nor restructure the costs to allow PIs to nurture and develop fledgling programs through WFO?

As Doc points out, we're not dead yet. Our team has also brought in new small projects and sponsors in the past year. But we're seeing even less support now and the WFO process even more punishing. Morale continues lower, and we don't know when our key team members will simply bail.

Anonymous said...

all LANS has done is re-organize to no effect, bean count, and point fingers at everyone else. There is NOTHING better at LANL in the year since LANS took over.... except for the big manager salaries and bonuses... NOTHING is better than it was... bit of course no one in Washington or at NNSA or DOE sees this.... huge management fee of $85M for what?

When Domenici sows up Monday for the big photo-op at TA-55 someone should shove a plutonium rod up his withered ass....

Anonymous said...

Nothing has improved? C'mon, you know that's not true. For example, at the last all hands meeting, Mikey told us that he's getting his travel reimbursements much faster now.

Anonymous said...

Interesting... Mikey is getting his travel reimbursements faster, but travel LOST my last two.

Anonymous said...

Here's a big LANS improvement for you. Mike listed the new daily "Links" E-mail as one of the big successes in his last All-Hands meeting. We now only have to read one page of upper management bull-shit each day, rather than several pages. Now that's progress!

The saddest part of all this is that LANS is showing no effectiveness or vigor in efforts to diversify the lab. Some WFO clients are leaving due to the ridiculous FTE costs that average around $450 K per FTE. Worse, many of the TSMs who bring in WFO funding are burning out and are frequently the first TSMs to bail when a group's funding begins to hit the wall. In some cases, they are able to take their sponsors along with them. Major programs which LANL could push to bring in new funding aren't being properly sold to sponsors by LANS management. As our funding deteriorates, LDRD projects, which live off an 8% tax of all incoming projects, will also soon begin to deteriorate. We already know the weapons budget is heading downward. Thus, there are few places left for a TSM to hide out for a while when the occasional funding shortfall arises. The so-called Displaced Worker accounts are being quickly cleaned out. The LANL safety net is developing major holes.

Mike and his buddies fiddle while LANL burns to the ground. The status quo can't go on much longer, but the LANS elite appears ready to bank their executive salaries and juicy perks while the place slowly collapses around them. It's sad watching this all unfold. LANS truly could care less about the long term viability of LANL. The best they have to offer is Mike's little white lie... "No RIFs, and no plans for a RIF". It's pathetic!

Dr. Strangelove said...

Shit! You guys are right! Things are NO better. Really... you are right. Another level of misdirection and denial is all that we see.

We see ourselves and our peers (including some DL/GL/Program people) busting their asses to swim up an ever increasing uphill river. Some of our sponsors are still with us in spite of all of this.

Maybe if we had our paychecks (or a nearly full retirement) coming in independent of the future of the laboratory, we would give up and "Go Cynical" but for the moment the best strategy seems to involve getting back up everytime they knock us down and leaning into it again.

On a good day, there is light at the end of the tunnel, on a bad day, it is just the train barreling down on us!

- Doc

Anonymous said...

Why should LANS top brass care what happens to the working staff at LANL? Their future and those of the lower level staff are hardly intertwined. You can expect LANS to do what NNSA tells them to do and nothing more. They aren't about to make waves and put their jobs at risk. It's the way the world works most of the time.

Anonymous said...

A major part of the problem with bringing in outside funding (WFO) is that the management (GLs and above) have no accountability for funding their staff. This is also true at LLNL.

If you become unfunded, it is your problem, not management's problem. Of course, there is no program development funding for TSMs. SO, you have to use the funding from your existing programs to develop new programs. That, of course, it really not legitimate.

Anonymous said...

All,

Some of the posts raise great points, but at least in the context of bringing in new work, getting overhead and WFO costs down, and generally making big improvements, I don't believe that it's fair to dump on the LANS folks. And no I'm not one -- just a former labbie who still visits on occasion.

There seems to be considerable frustration in the LANS management ranks that they haven't been able to make some of changes everyone is looking for. But, bear in mind that our dear Senator and many others have worked hard to make sure that there can't be any changes, since almost all could/would result in a short-term hit to employment. From what I have seen, LANS has been dealt a hand and told exactly how it must be played. And if you think about it, because all of the LANS managers make more if LANL makes more, there is absolutely no incentive for any of them would do anything that wouldn't expand WFO and increase the lab budget. They make more if the lab prospers.

Anonymous said...

Mikey is a God in the eyes of LANS simply because he, with help from his DOE refugee now Chief of Staff to king Mikey-- Rich. Marquez, together maneuvered the LANL and LLNL back into the hands of UC. That's all that ever mattered. It's about power and appeasing egomanics bound and determined to keep it. And Congress is fully aware, they just don't care so long as the UC/Bechtel machine keeps lining their pockets. The corruption is rampant, and with people like Marquez in the background the deals being made are as ruthless as necessary to maintain the status quo for those in control. LANL and LLNL are already souless. That's the sense of loss and dismay we're feeling. Deep down we know that our work and commitment no longer has any relevance. It's like network news these days..it's no. longer about. quality journalism, it's about corporate profits. For us it's no longer about science, it's about power and
contol and nothing we say is going to change that. The people running these Labs could care less about our views.

Anonymous said...

Does "No Planned RIF'S" mean that our RIFs are going to be "UNPLANNED?"