LANL: The Real Story

From the number and the passion of the blogs on this website it is clear that there are a lot of people who care very deeply for the laboratory. While that's very commendable, it's also a mistake. Why? Because the lab doesn't care very deeply for you. Anyone who thinks that TSMs at the lab have effective tenure is woefully mistaken. LANL hires and fires by division, not as a laboratory. If the money dries up for your project, you are in deep doo-doo. It doesn't matter how well you have performed your job or how hard you've worked, you are vulnerable. During my time at LANL (25 years) I have participated in firing multiple people on two occasions. None of these people were “underperformers”. In fact, those who were most vulnerable tended to be successful scientists in their 40s and 50s who were or had been middle managers.

That being said, how should people react to the present situation? First of all, for those who are near retirement now is the time to bail. Don't worry that your departure and your colleagues departures might leave the lab too short-staffed to do our missions. That situation isn't of your making and it's not your responsibility to put yourself at risk. That problem belongs to Nanos, the NNSA and the politicians. So far, they haven't gone out of their way to give you any incentives to stay so you should extend to them the same courtesy.

For young staff people, if you have an opportunity to go somewhere else which has a decent environment for science, take it. The older you get the fewer opportunities will arise. Also, if you wait until you are older your financial risk will increase. The climate for doing science isn't going to get any better here. I think Tom Bowles is sincerely trying to improve it, but he doesn't have the resources to make much impact. The reality is that the climate for doing science at LANL has been monotonically decreasing ever since WWII. After the war, LANL received block funding and pretty much had the latitude to work on what we wanted to. Over the years that situation has steadily eroded to the point where most of the meaningful decisions are made in Washington. The present group of upper managers are control freaks who think that science is measured by pert charts and milestones. Most of them have never done any science and they don't have a clue as to what science is.

For those who would like to stay at LANL, realize that times of turmoil are also times of opportunity. This might be a good time to get funding for that project that you haven't been able to get funded. However, don't lull yourself into thinking that the long-term prognosis for science at the lab (particularly small science) is good. The ER side of DOE is facing flat or declining budgets and there is no way that people are going to be able to keep up with the increasing costs that the new safety/security culture will engender.

However, there is some good news. The costs of computing have dropped enormously over the past several years to where one can do significant computing on a box that costs less that $2k. Projects that 10 years ago had to be done in a large laboratory setting now can be done at home. People should consider taking their small science outside of the laboratory. Since small science is where the real breakthroughs and advancements come from, why bother to share this with the laboratory if they don’t appreciate it?

Finally, what do we need to do about Nanos and his entourage? There seems to be a mentality here that if we all band together we can get rid of this guy. That’s bullshit. Anyone who has ever managed at the lab has had the experience of a group of “concerned employees” going behind their back to their superiors to have them removed. It always happens and it never works. Why? Because the people they are complaining to have had the same thing done to them and they resent it. It makes it easy to be labeled as whiners and therefore dismissed.

In order to understand how to properly deal with this, you first of all have to understand the purpose of upper management. They don’t bring in any money. Since they don’t control the money, they can’t provide any meaningful strategic planning or anything else for the lab. Their first job is to be a pain in the butt. Our job is to get the job done in spite of all the obstacles they put in our way. This can require a lot of creativity, but we have a long history of accomplishing that at LANL.

Their second function is to provide entertainment. We also have a long history of that at LANL. Remember Don Kerr and Rosemary Harris with the infamous “quit talking about the director and me” memo? How about the exploits of Big Al Tiedman? If you want to deal with Nanos then you need to exploit his biggest weakness: he’s a stuffed shirt with a really short fuse who takes himself seriously. The one thing people like that can’t stand is to have everybody laughing at them. Pushing his buttons ought to be real easy. So easy you can even do it anonymously. Face it, anyone who gets bent out of shape about bumper stickers and cowboy hats is just begging to have his chain yanked. With even a modest amount of effort we ought to be able to get him and his minions popping Prozac like they are M&Ms. If we can get him to spend all of his time chasing his tail, then he won’t have enough time to continue damaging the laboratory. We need to take a tip from our fundamentalist brethren and consider WWFD (What Would Feynman Do?) in dealing with this guy.