Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Reviews

Pros

I was an employee at LLNL from 2008-2013. I was laid off with several other co-workers. The outreach Officer from the Veterans group at LLNL reached out to me and assisted me in finding a new career at LLNL. Even though I am not a Veteran, I still feel that there is very much a family atmosphere at LLNL and I am very grateful to be apart of that family. Thanks VETS!

Advice to Management

Love my career!

Pros

Coming from the tech industry, LLNL's work-life balance is refreshing. Many people work AWS schedules and get every other friday off. There are a lot of fun events and programs on-site to take advantage of during your lunchtime to step away from your desk and relax. Bands, Authors, Fitness/Gym, shopping events.

Advice to Management

Build a culture/engagment survey that ties to the beliefs and vision of the laboratory as a workplace. Get buy in from leadership, measure it regularly and continually seek to improve the culture of the labs. It's moving in that direction, but it is something that will continue to build the positive momentum that's been building over the past few years.

Pros

Good work life balance, benefits

Advice to Management

Keep it up

Pros

Great people all committed to protecting our country and advancing our programs/achievements/inventions. Programs and opportunities are around every corner if you're willing to seek them out.

Advice to Management

Ensure you're growing the support systems as quickly as you're growing the revenue generating side of the business. Otherwise you'll end up with no infrastructure to support the great innovations.

Pros

-A wealth of information and resources are given to employees to improve their future.
-On-site cafeteria.
-Educational opportunities.
-Competitive salaries.

Advice to Management

Encourage new employees to further their education through the lab.

Pros

Get to work in HPC on some of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

Pros

I came from a private consulting company and the hours/work-life balance and the benefits at LLNL are way ahead of my old workplaces. We have flexible schedules, inexpensive health insurance (through Kaiser), and a god 401LK. Managers respect time off.

 The older employees here grumble a lot, but I think many of them have no idea what the outside is like and how good we have it here. If many of these employees had to work a job at a normal, for-profit company and would be expected to do productive work (not just watching Fox News and movies all day) and work more than 2 hours a day they would realize how good they have it here.

Advice to Management

Cut payroll bloat and re-invest in facilities. It seems like managers are petrified of lawsuits and cant fire unproductive people if they have gotten beyond their probation period

Pros

Decent pay, great benefits, flexible hours, very talented people and the opportunity to make a real impact.

Advice to Management

Continue to monitor the pay and benefits of the private sector to ensure competitive compensation to retain employees.

Pros

There are very few places where true work life balance can be a reality like at LLNL. There is also a strong feeling of community among employees. Having worked in industry and at LLNL, I can say the culture at LLNL is more likely to make you feel good about your work and those you work with. People tend to work here for life, but never get bored. That is because there is an emphasis on learning new skills and on education. It is also because employees are not pigeon holed into using just a small part of their skill set like in industry. There are also lots of networking clubs and talks on anything from technical topics to very personal topics that are open to all employees. You even get an office!

Pros

Bleeding edge science and technology with access to the greatest minds on the planet in your STEM field of choice. Salaries are competitive, benefits are excellent, and bonuses are common. Strong sense of job security and job satisfaction.

Advice to Management

Provide more temporary options to attract and retain employees waiting for clearances (and spell this process out in job postings). Most postings just state that a clearance is required and don't offer a temporary employment path while clearances are processed. We are turning off top talent if we word job descriptions to imply there is no path forward for uncleared applicants.

Also, STEM job descriptions should summarize more specifically what an interviewing panel's expectations are for (understandably) vague roles.

Keep being proactive to counter brain-drain to Bay Area start ups. Benefits are a good way to attract talent. One option might be a student loan repayment plan.

We need a large, modern, fully staffed and stocked gym facility. We have over 6000 employees here. We need a gym comparable to a small private college's facilities. This could be a good recruiting tool especially if there are options for subsidizing gym use.