Lawrence Livermore Lab Reviews

Pros

As many reviewers have noted, there can be opportunities to do work at LLNL that would be difficult to find elsewhere. The technical and scientific staff is very good, some of the smartest people you will ever encounter. The environment is also nice. Most people have offices with doors, no cubicles. From the old days when the Lab had extravagant funding there is still some nice landscaping.

Cons

Money talks at LLNL. Managers who are known to be abusive to their staff are allowed to continue in management if they bring in money. If you're unlucky enough to work for one of these managers, life can be miserable and you can't count on the organization to help you (after all, they know all a bout the manager). There is little in the way of a technical career path. You can be a technical contributor or, perhaps a lead, but you really will not advance unless you bring in money. And that's hit or miss.

Advice to Senior Management

As others have noted: why bother. Management has no interest in the advice of serfs. Management decisions are remarkably stratified and happen at high levels. They ignore everyone else.

Pros

Research can be very interesting. Opportunities to publish. Many of the people are excellent. Resources for research are hard to beat. Extremely flexible work schedule.

Cons

You will be punished during rankings if you don't manage money and people. One to N ranking system is terrible. Old people who don't contribute have access to funds through good old boys network and use this to beat up others. Always in competition with fellow employees. Only proffessional kissups will succeed.

Advice to Senior Management

Unleash researchers from project managers by getting rid of how people bill hours. Although LLNL is set up as a research institution, over emphasise on becoming a manager or managing money limits scientific output

Pros

Excellent opportunities to do scientific research

Cons

Lots of administrative and management impediments to getting things done

Pros

Zero pressure environment.
Great flexibility in schedule.
Laid back, brilliant, quirky coworkers.
World's fastest supercomputers.
Good pay.
Good job security.
Recognition of work-life balance.

Cons

Politically funded and directed, so leadership has to be full of sh*t to match Congress.
Militaristic security thinking.
Overly conservative culture, especially for SF Bay Area.
Uninspiring mission.
Ambiguous and shifting goals.
Upward mobility is very limited.
Career track tends to be flat for most people.
Previous pension package has been discontinued, and this was one of the major perks before.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of your bland pronouncements and get a real, inspiring mission. Spice up the culture a little. It's boring! I guess given that you answer to Congress and to the security hawks, you're doing pretty damned well, though!

Pros

place to nurture your career
very smart folks and resources
good benefits and good salary compared to cost of living

Cons

fast paced, multiple projects can lead one feeling unprepared
can get lost in big projects as there can be dependence on lot of people

Advice to Senior Management

need to provide greater incentives and solid guidance approach to helping young scientists climb the career rank. need to collaborate with outside industry. less bureaucracy needed..

Pros

When it was run by UC, the benefits were great. Training opportunities were also wonderful.
But at the end of the day, it was about the work - helping to make the nation safe was always worth while.

Cons

Cost structure made us too uncompetitive with other national labs. Salary management was unsatisfactory since they employed a 1-n ranking where the top people were division leaders/program managers who did not always provide any tangible value to the organization but
were a major cost drain.

Advice to Senior Management

The 2008 layoffs got rid of people on fully funded projects jeopardizing project deliverables. The selection of these employees was done by upper management without proper
consultation or notification of the project/program leads. I'm glad to see some of those in upper management have lost their standing but I'm not sure how much the culture has changed.

Pros

Wide array of great jobs/projects; fairly easyto move around internally; bleeding edge tech; great mission spaces; good work/life balance; strong research investment

Cons

Management at many levels is broken. Lethargic culture. Mgmt and admin mired in outdated processes and attitudes and can't get out of its own way. Inflexible and unable to adapt.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut half the mgmt staff, embrace significant change, admit system is fundamentally broken and hard fixes are needed. Evolve communication and employee participation.

Pros

Lots of interesting projects. Facilities that can be found nowhere else (such as the National Ignition Facility). Connections to famous researchers.

Cons

The lab (or rather the U.S. Department of Energy) places far too many restrictions on unclassified projects. These restrictions put a significant damper on creativity, collaboration, and experimentation.

Advice to Senior Management

Unclassified research projects should be subject to less intellectual property restrictions. I imagine that numerous Lawrence Livermore-based research projects have been reinvented elsewhere because of LLNL's "lock it all in a safe and throw away the key" approach to intellectual property.

Pros

Work being done is leading edge and you get to learn about research not done anywhere else in the world through series of seminars. For students, there is a poster session at the end of the summer, which gets you great recognition within the lab for your work.

Cons

Isolated location, Livermore is a very small town. Great community, but not much to explore and do for younger employees.
You can carry little of your experiences there to other jobs, unless you stay in the energy and defense industry.

Advice to Senior Management

The intern program is very good. The only complaint I had was that the first couple of weeks were very slow (my workstation wasn't setup). It would be nice to arrive and get started with work right away. It would be nice to have student intern group projects, much of my work seemed very isolated from what anyone else was doing.

Pros

good pay...nice science. Technical competencies the best in the world. Fantastic lower level management and a great history. I like it...and i hate it

Cons

disrespect from the senior management. This is science not a business model. The privatization is a travesty and all the republicans should be fired and strung up by their necks for this as they have killed a great american institution that allowed us to win the cold war

Advice to Senior Management

help the students and make sure that you allow people to pursue other scientific pursuits. Also fight for the scientists in congress dont just sit there like a lame duck