Mike's excuse that only Congress can change LANL's mission is a cop-out. Look at Sandia -- approximately 50% of their budget comes from WFO sponsors. Why? Because SNL management has over the years had the foresight to *encourage* staff to persue WFO, rather than to discourage them to do so, as has been the case with LANL management. LANL has had the opportunity to diversify for as long as I've worked there, and has steadfastly chosen not to do so. To use Congress as the excuse now for LANL having but a single narrow mission is disingenuous, and it appears that staff will now start to pay the price for management's shortsightedness: with their jobs.
--Gussie
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61 comments:
Congress is going to change LANL's mission to missionless. There is work being done at LANL that can stil be done by the same folks if they have the guts to privatize their work, form a small company, and continue with outside funding. But it'll take folks who are willing to work for almost nothing for a while before the funding starts to flow. And those are not folks making huge mortgage payments, paying for kids to attend expensive colleges, paying off student debt, etc. In other words, most of LANL.
This is an argument that rationalizes the blocking of any funding coming in for other initiatives so to ensue the Lab, it's workforce, the idiot politicians we elect, and the State as a whole are more inclined to embrace Pu pit production at Los Alamos. Given the alternative--extinction, what other choice do you have? It's analagous to the old adage...squeeze their crown jewels and their hearts and minds will follow. It's a simple strategy, but effective.
I think you mean the family jewels...
Not, mind you, that LANL couldn't benefit from losing some of its staff. There's been a steady buildup of deadwood over the years. Management, however, is where the richest opportunities to clean house exist, but we all know what the likelihood of that happening is.
Gussie,
Thanks for those insightful comments about LANS cop-out on WFO growth. You're correct about SNL. They didn't go hat-in-hand to NNSA and say "mother, may I?" before diversifying their project portfolios. Lots of additional national security work could be performed at LANL under WFOs if the lab were really committed to it. These projects would fit nicely with our charter. However, to aggressively go after new WFO work we would need to become more efficient and lower our FTE rates. That would mean less money for the bloated bureaucracy at LANL. It will never happen. Instead, we'll hear lame excuses from our top management as to why we can't do it. Talk about a lack of vision, responsibility and "can do" attitude! Mike is a perfect example of this.
LANS and Mike have zero credibility as far as I'm concerned. BTW, I've worked on WFO's for many years and had almost no support from LANL management for any of my efforts. They love to tax the heck out of any incoming funds, though. With FTE rates now spiraling out of control, I doubt I'll be able to keep my WFO money coming in for much longer. When the funding stops, so will my job. TSMs doing WFO's who lose funding will probably be some of the first people to be RIFed, as they aren't as well connected to the good 'ol boy network that lives off NNSA programmatic funding. Many of the staff members I know who work on WFO's are now actively looking around to other DOE labs to do their work.
Mike's total lack of intiative to take on new outside funding will have a bad effect on LANL. I expect LANS will have successfully turned LANL into a Pit Factory within the next few years. Perhaps that is what they really want to do with the place. It's easy money, right, Mike?
I wouldn't say all of the blame lies with LANS and managers. I've seen some of the most god-awful proposals come out of the staff members at the lab for external funding. Although, one could argue that this is again a side effect of bad management that fails to coordinate these proposals.
Whatever happened to that IAS thing? There was a talk at the phys. auditorium a few months ago and they made a big deal about some gigantic biology proposals that the lab put in to some external funding agency. On a related topic, anyone else find the name "Institute for Advanced Studies" to be a bit odd? Is there some hope that a funder might get confused and think the LANL IAS is the "other" one that everyone has heard of?
Average FTE costs back in 2001 (pre-Nanos) were about $280 K. Today they stand at about $450 K. It would be beneficial if they could be reset back to the $280 K mark, but the odds of this are probably lower than the odds of them going up to $500 K in the next few years. The funding angst that this high FTE rate causes will be dumped upon the working level TSMs, no doubt. Currently, non-weapons staff are being strongly encourgage to go after BAAs from outfits like DARPA and DHS. The actual amount of funding that this brings in, however, will be miniscule. If FTE rates are not brought down to competitive levels, then there will be no growth in outside projects.
Lots of additional national security work could be performed at LANL under WFOs if the lab were really committed to it.
There is one problem with this WFO. This would mean that you would have a defined amount on money for the project, a completion due date and above all you'd have to have a product or results that could not be like before, blowing smoke up congress ass or some senator. The PI's feet will be held to the fire and you'll have results or be gone. Life is easy in the private sector. No more milking the cow. How many of LANL or LLNL scientist are up for that?
Please list your names.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Every comment to date on this post is spot on (for a nice change, I might add). I'd like to make a couple of additional observations about how LANS has handled the upcoming budget shortfall.
1. LANS is obviously fully aware that the '08 budget will require that they lay staff off from their jobs, perhaps as many as 1,400 - 1,500 of them.
2. The indirect way LANS has allowed this information to trickle out to the public, and therefore to LANL staff was done purposefully to further instill an environment of uncertainty, apprehension, and fear among staff. Why? See #3, below.
3. As a previous comment stated: to make the prospect of receiving funding relief in the form of DOE money earmarked for Pu pit fabrication look more attractive.
Not that it should be all that difficult to convert a growing percentage of LANL staff to the concept. I've noticed the demographic shift that has been occurring here since Nanos shut the place down a few years ago.
The older, or in some cases, just more disgusted staff who have been leaving during the last few years have been replaced with a younger class of staff who don't seem to have many strong feelings about much beyond bringing home a paycheck. Pit production? No problem! Long-term decommissioned nuclear reactor radioactive waste storage facility? No problem!
Perhaps there is some truth to the philosophy that is occasionally expressed here: LANL deserves what it gets.
Wait, what? The younger staff are just interested in paychecks, but the older staff had some higher purpose?
Does some talented scientist have access to a bullshit meter that could be lent to this blog?
7/29/07 2:22 PM
This list doesn't seem to be growing and that is exactly what congress and the senate see's. No one is stepping up to the plate. Face it LANL and LLNL, weapons work is dead and your livelihood can not be based on doing work for this subject matter. So maybe I'll ask the question another way. What projects would you like to work on. What can you do that the private sector can't in the same length of time and for the same money? What will be your end product? What value will your results have that would be beneficial to society? List them below.
1.
2.
3.
4..
SNL may have a bit more freedom to choose projects because it has a better reputation with policy makers. Mikey may, for once, be telling the truth.
To poster 3:46 PM, yes, I have to agree with 2:38 PM. As one of old-timers I can honestly say that many (not all) of the younger staff are just interested in paychecks. They work 9-5 and no more and they have this expectation that they will just get funded without having to work for it. They expect to be taken care of and strangely enough, management does nothing about it and ends up taking care of them out of fear of getting a lawsuit slapped against them. For some data, just take a look at the parking lots after 5 PM and on the weekends.
7:03p To be fair. Our management has told us that working extra hours could be considered "suspicious behavior" by security. Since our shops are gone, computers inaccessible, labs have been made 'safe', LANS library is a joke, and most likely we have better research, computer, and shop facilities at home there is no reason to go in extra hours anymore.
Could you elaborate on what counts as an old-timer vs a youngster? 30+ years, 20-30, 10-20, 6-10, 0-5? No sarcasm meant by this question, just curious.
My own experience with "younger staff" varies. Many are very dedicated hard workers who care about their profession as well as their own careers.
On the other hand, the long-dark-tea-time-of-our-souls that started with the end of the cold war, with the Wen Ho nonsense, with the NEST debacle, with Nanos, with Bechtel, has undermined our ability to hire deeply dedicated entry-level employees. We lost much of our reputation and the reasons good people would want to be here.
This doesn't mean all young people are here for "just a job", but it does seem to be more like that than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.
This ongoing demoralization has also thinned out many of our best "old timers" who have moved on to greener pastures, including early (or timely) retirement.
We are in a bad spiral and *most* of what is being done hardly slows it and often accelerates it. Even these blogs, or at least the outrageously pitiful comments (50% is whining and cheap-shotting) seems to help with the continued beginning of the end.
I guess the reason I whine and bitch on this blog is because I at least feel like someone is listening and gives a damn.
10:43pm : I second that sentiment. This is the only place I can go and get a perspective that isn't one that assumes that the state of the lab will ultimately turn out to be a hollywood ending where all of the strife and struggle we're going through will result in everything being "all ok". It's irritating to sift through the personal vendettas that some of the posters have with Terry and Alan and the various managers at the lab (and the delusional folks who think there was some conspiracy at work late last year when Mitchell left), but at least after filtering out that noise, some signal remains.
On the IAS post above. Yes, it's a poorly chosen name, likely due to someone involved in the LANS contract proposal, not a "local". That said, the institutes supposedly are providing a route for LANL folks to bring in funding with a significantly reduced overhead. By significantly reduced, we're talking overhead rates that wouldn't automatically be dismissed by NSF type sources. So, someone out there at LANL is working on a way to bring in bucks without the silly overhead we usually see around these here parts.
This doesn't mean all young people are here for "just a job", but it does seem to be more like that than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.
The old timers had a mission that was nation critical and therefore did not mind putting in the extra time. Long hours just came natural.
Today's labs do not have a mission critical nor do I want to ever see one again. So going to work is just that. Going to work. It's a 9-5 JOB with nothing to gain except stay employed. It has no real benefits because with the transition that's all been taken away. So what do you expect.
Todays labs are just an 8 for 8 and out the gate routine and that's ALL you are ever going to get from now on.
Even the merit system is a joke. The labs now days would be better off if they'd stop wasting six months out of the years trying to fit people to a bell curve, when behind close doors it's all the good old boy system anyway.
When will the labs get smart an adopt the STEP system. It's the one used by the trades and civil service. You have a job, it pays so much. When the pay package comes in at 5%, everyone gets 5% and that's the end of that.If you want better pay you have to apply for a position, get an interview and maybe get hired. Otherwise you stay right where you are.
Again I will say things are changing and more change for the good is needed. As far as working OT or long hours, there is NO NEED to. The labs are just a JOB, just a JOB.
Again do not look for people working on the weekend or at home like some of us did for decades at home or even slept on the property. That is not going to happen short of WW III that would have the threat of exterminating of man kind, which I hope never happens.
So I hope the old people can understand why the young people are as they are. I'd say their life will be spend with family at home not at work. realistically that alone will make for a better society.
Don't let DOE/NNSA off the hook either in discouraging WFO at LANL. Unless things have changed, there was a DOE/NNSA requirement that the local NNSA folks in Albuquerque add an extra "WFO tax" to the cost of every project conducted at LANL for a non DOE/NNSA-sponsor. It would be interesting to know if Sandia is also required to pay this WFO tax. Would also be interesting to know why St. Pete isn't out there beating up NNSA for this raid on the cookie jar.
Good discussion in previous comments, but bear in mind that many BAAs and other govt. research proposals that come out nowadays have a specific requirement that either precludes participation by a national laboratory, or limits it significantly.
There appears to be little future in NNSA's Complex 2030 vision. There will be no money for it, as this Newseek article points out.
www.msnbc.msn.com
/id/20010728/site/newsweek/?from=rss
When Silence Isn't Golden - Newsweek, Aug 6, 2007
By Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek
...Consider the outlook. From 2005 to 2030, the 65-and-over population will nearly double to 71 million; its share of the population will rise to 20 percent from 12 percent. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—programs that serve older people—already exceed 40 percent of the $2.7 trillion federal budget. By 2030, their share could hit 75 percent of the present budget, projects the Congressional Budget Office. The result: a political impasse.
The 2030 projections are daunting. To keep federal spending stable as a share of the economy would mean eliminating all defense spending and most other domestic programs (for research, homeland security, the environment, etc.). To balance the budget with existing programs at their present economic shares would require, depending on assumptions, tax increases of 30 percent to 50 percent—or budget deficits could quadruple. A final possibility: cut retirement benefits by increasing eligibility ages, being less generous to wealthier retirees or trimming all payments.
I hope that is not a surprise to you 11:49. We've only heard this for what, 20+ years now? As with most things in the US, there will be no planning/response until the problem reaches a crisis. It's SOP.
What's the worst case, you work until you die while paying higher taxes? Best case, you collect the equivalent of today's full benefits and bone the generations behind you?
7/29/07 7:03 PM
9 to 5 even without a lunch hour is only 8 hours. Isn't LANL still on the 9-80 work schedule? Sounds like the same old practices to me, work 40 hours or less a week, get every other Friday off, get paid for 80 hrs. and whine.
To 1:30.
Some people are on 9-80's, 5-40's or even 4-10's.
but most people are on 4-6's, with lots'o coffee breaks
but most people are on 4-6's, with lots'o coffee breaks
7/30/07 9:16 PM
I think you had a typo - it should be the 4-4's with as much socializing and screwing off that is done.
Oops in LANL speak it is called "networking"
7/30/07 1:01 AM - no personal vendettas ... Terry Wallace, Jr. is a lying ass and he got his position because of his momma. Plain and simple. You cannot honestly tell me that Terry is the best person this institution could find in an exhaustive national search. Please!
Poster 7/30/07 9:16 PM - right on, Brother!
"right on"?
Did you mean that I was right about the 4x6's as a matter of fact, or that you also enjoyed the 4x6's.
(I do, too)
Hecuva job B-Div leader Gary Resnick and T-Div leader Tony Redondo on the GTL biofuel proposal that tanked in the worst way, heckuva job. Browne would be proud.
7/30/07 10:45 PM - don't forget C-Div leader Gene Peterson by way of John Gordon and Kevin Ott (the new Hydrogen Institute "leader"). This entire crew is thinking how to scam the money for themselves while excluding others. People who wanted to be involved and were excluded have left the Lab because of this. Senior management should be proud of their appointments. Yes, heckuva job Mike A., Terry, Alan, Gray, and Mary Neu! Thanks folks, may we have more of your fabulous leadership?!?!?
I thought John Gordon was more experienced with ethanol than hydrogen.
7/30/07 10:45 PM and 11:32 PM - I think you are way out of line. Leave the GLs alone.
" It's a 9-5 JOB with nothing to gain except stay employed. "
I agree that there is a clear difference between employees post-Nanus and those of us who started 20 or 30 years ago. It IS just another job. Anymore, LANL isn't here to protect my country, not here to do the world's best science, not here as a resourceful alternative to war. It is all about the paycheck and how that paycheck compares to other industries in places that are far more interesting to live. I worry that as LANS persists in treating us as lowest-cost, replaceable, short-term commodities, they are producing younger former employees who have mainly national secrets as their resume. Why should Congress feel secure knowing that the LANL revolving door is speeding up and potentially many more knowledge reservoirs out in the private sector where the dollar is king? LANL's pre-Nanus mission was to focus careers on nuclear weapons (yeah, and a few other areas, too) and discourage turnover through personal security and prosperity. This was not a bad game plan.
5:30 pm:
"Why should Congress feel secure knowing that the LANL revolving door is speeding up and potentially many more knowledge reservoirs out in the private sector where the dollar is king?"
Excellent point, and one I haven't seen get much attention on these blogs. Bring in scientific talent, give them Q clearances, teach them everything there is to know about nuclear weapons, and then through mismanagement and establishment of punitive new rules and inhibitions that prevent any work from being done, coupled with ever-growing morale problems and a profit-focused leadership, force them to leave, some highly disgruntled. Who is looking to take advantage of the US equivalent of the Russian nuclear weapon designer problem of a decade or so ago, I wonder?
Yeah, leave the GLs alone.
Those poor babies.
If there isn't already a difference in how the younger staff see LANL as a job instead of a career, there soon will be. The benefits change from pensions to transportable retirement savings accounts will see to that. With LANS raping the LANL budget, there won't be meaningful pay raises at LANL anytime in the foreseeable future so those that want to keep up with the cost-of-living will eventually have to leave LANL. Unlike the old-timers, the younger staff can and will leave without any adverse impact to their retirement so there's little incentive for them to stay and build a career. Hence LANL will be seen by the younger staff as a temporary stepping stone to a brighter future somewhere else.
DNDO will be training what will be essentially temporary LANL staff how to build nuclear weapons only to bid them farewell and wish them luck in their new career. Wherever that new career might take them.
7/31/07 7:09 AM,
Its not just the GLs, its the DIVISION leaders. And its not just the axe to grind. Its a question of how to we move the lab in a positive direction (ie ENERGY SECURITY), when the incompetence, or perhaps even malice of these folks is stifling. Seriously, how do we move past? Do we form an underground committed to seeing LANL survive and write proposals in secret? What? (NOTE TO CIA TROLLS, THIS IS NOT SEDITION, JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO HELP LANL AND THE USA).
5:30 PM, 6:26 PM, and 8:05 PM all bring up excellent points. I've been around LA a while, so I know some of the "more experienced" staff. Many say that since testing stopped, the lab seems to be just foundering around. While SBSS (Science based stockpile stewardship) does have major value to understand how nuclear weapons work, for most people it seems to be more about job security than anything else. One incredibly disturbing thing about these blogs is that the subject of retirement benefits gets hundreds of comments, while the subject of a for- profit company making $billions off of nuclear weapons seems to get much less attention.
Although I do know some younger staff who are incredibly dedicated to their jobs, and stay much later than 5pm. Kudos to them! (I'd LOVE to stay and help but my IWDs prohibit me from working in the lab after 6)
I disagree! I am now an oldtimer and find many of the younger employees in the weapons program as dedicated (and bright) as they need to be given the changes in the weapons program mission. I also recognize the many hours the oldtimers put in at work and being away from their families to serve a national need. What I can't understand is why the need to be devisive and try and pit the young against the old? We need to stick together!
Hey all the news about Los Alamos is not bad. Check out the USA Today
story.
"
Physics cries foul in 2003 World Series"
Dan Vergano
Enlarge By Charles Krupa, AP
The Florida Marlins celebrate after defeating the New York Yankees 2-0 to win the World Series in New York. A study finds that Florida didn't deserve to win.
Amid a bleak season for New York Yankees fans, science offers some solace � the wrong team, the Florida Marlins, beat them in 2003's World Series, finds a study.
You may wonder, along with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, how this injustice could occur?
"The world of sports provides an ideal laboratory for modeling competition because game data are accurate, abundant, and accessible," answers the study in the journal Physical Review E. "Even after a long series of competitions, the best team does not always finish first."
The problem, say study authors Eli Ben-Naim and Nick Hengartner of the Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory, is that the baseball season, at a mere 162 games, is too short. Instead, the number of games that would keep a lucky-but-lousy team from dethroning a statistically superior team is 265.
"Baseball actually isn't doing too bad a job compared to other leagues," says Ben-Naim, a statistical physicist. "Probably the worst is the National Football League with only 16 games in a season."
The study authors, who specialize in studying random behavior in complex materials, plugged the odds of low-seed teams beating high-seed ones, 44% in baseball over the last century, into a mathematical model of a typical season.
The more games played, the better the chances that the higher seeded teams will become champions, according to the study. And it becomes less likely that a weak team will weasel its way to the top.
Tournaments and one-game series are particularly likely to produce Cinderella winners, for the same reason. "Of course, lots of people like to see these kinds of winners, that's why we have March Madness," Ben-Naim says, referring to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's championship basketball tournament.
But to ensure that the best Major League Baseball team wins, a longer World Series, say 11 games, would be mathematically appropriate. "The same is true for other competitions in arts, science and politics," write the study authors.
A more efficient competitive process would be to schedule a preliminary series of competitions to cull the obviously bad teams, and then follow with a longer season devoted to only the good ones.
"In real life, we have to compete all the time, rank people, rank proposals and other things," Ben-Naim says. The study suggests a more efficient approach in such cases would be to throw out the worst competitors immediately and "spend all your energy evaluating only the few obviously best ones."
Tough luck for the Marlins in that case. Statistics indicate they were the worst team in 30 years to win a World Series, say the authors.
Poster 7:37 PM - the GLs are not poor babies. However, they are just following orders from their DLs, the ADCLES and PADSTE.
7/30 9"55PM says "I think you had a typo - it should be the 4-4's with as much socializing and screwing off that is done."
With meetings factored in, you're probably right.
zzzzzzz....
This is the typical "old-timer's" day at the Lab these days. Just kind of watching the clock and waiting for retirement.
click...click....click
This is the typical new kid on the block. Surfing the internet and sending emails to friends after arriving an hour late, but of course planning to leave an hour early to make up the difference
stab...slash...kiss...spin...spin
This is the typical manager's day at the Lab these days
What you don't hear or see much off anymore--work...work...work
"What you don't hear or see much off anymore--work...work...work"
Why bother? This institution is dieing and most of the workers who are left can sense it every day even if they don't want to admit it just yet. Do the bare minimum, put in your 8 hours and enjoy the paycheck while it lasts. That's where we are at, like it or not. It's not an ideal situation, but given the abysmal morale at LANL, it is what you might expect. LANS, DOE, NNSA and Congress have given the labs no real vision for the future beyond that of a Pit Factory. Give it a couple of more years and you won't even recognize the place as a research lab any longer.
I hear lots of work, work, work. The people I know that are left are busting their ass! Yes, having badly misjudged the state of afairs last year the remaining quality I know are spending late nights and early mornings frantically trying to tie up loose ends and finish publications, working on research plans and padding CVs in time for the fall recruiting season.
I had stopping reading this blog for a while because many comments had little substance.
There was a lot of substance in the ones above.
Thanks,
Eric said:
"I had stopping reading this blog for a while..."
Eric: who cares?
to 5:10
Thanks for working hard to lower the substance quotient again.
You are very consistent.
:-D
Thanks to everyone else.
"Eric said...
I had stopping reading this blog for a while because many comments had little substance.
There was a lot of substance in the ones above."
And none whatsoever in yours.
9:14, too funny. I wonder if those guys did that research on LANL time or their own time? Not taking anything away from those guys, but $2.2B/yr and that's LANL "The World's Greatest Science Protecting America" in the news?
11:40pm
I know those guys. They work about
60-70hrs a week. Yes they did this work on their own time and yes they can get a job outside of LANL no problem. By the way if you had any kind of brains you would realize what they are really doing and why it could bring in big money to the lab that might save your sorry ass. Try thinking it could be good for you.
60-70 hours per week is 12-14 hours per day over five days, or 10-12 hours per day over six days.
I believe I would call BS on that.
3:14, Thanks for so eloquently answering my question. They did the research on their own time, which was the point. They didn't do it on LANL's $2.2B dime, but LANL gets a piggyback by association. I imagine a lot of good stuff gets done on a researcher's own time.
Like I said, taking nothing away from them. I have no doubt those guys put in serious time. I looked up their LDRD projects and I've heard one of them speak. I have no doubt they can go elsewhere.
As for my sorry ass, thanks for thinking about saving it, but it's beyond saving. Perhaps they can save someone else's ass in my place?
Hmmm, regarding your request that I try thinking. I'd like to say my job required some real thinking and creativity, and maybe even on occasion mattered a little, but that would make me delusional. Having done it for too many years, I'm trying to avoid that state these days. I tend to save thinking for my outside activities.
Keep up the good work.
Has everyone gotten amnesia? The National Labs were heavily involved in energy research and renewable energy in the 1970s and early 1980s, until Pres. Reagan pulled the plug. Funding was at least 40% non-weapons. Our mission was weapons, yes, AND energy research and many other non-weapons projects.
If our brilliant scientists from that period were capable of working in more than one narrow area at a time, why can't the current scientists do the same?
Is anyone actively taking the risk of fighting against Pu pit production and other such nonsense?
8/3/07 11:32 AM - maybe cuz' you are a manager or a "support" organization person. Some of us actually do sneak in and do work after 5pm.
11:32 here. Technical. Lots'o people claim to work 50-60-70. Lots of BS claims of "writing paper" or "writing proposals" at home.
Recall 50 hours is 10 hours a day. 8 am to 6:30 with 30 minute lunch.
60 hours is 12 hours a day. 8 am to 8:30 with 30 minute lunch.
I have yet to see it.
My mission, as a long time employee of the Lab, if I should choose to accept it, is to hang in there long enough to retire. If that means staying late, so be it. Just so long as I don't have to work. The Lab's mission therefore should be to keep the doors open long enough for me to retire.
Poster 10:03 AM, I hear you. You state your mission very well. Unfortunately, given the current state of affairs at LANL, the mission you mention should more accurately be labeled as a "suicide mission".
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