r&d engineer

postdoctoral research associate

scientist

senior scientist

postdoctoral fellow

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Management inconsistent with employee development, job expectations, working hours, constantly changing organizational structure and job duties, mainly in response to crisis situations arising from audit findings and/or budget cuts.  Many unpaid overtime hours required of salaried staff.

Security and safety mandates sometimes at cross-purposes with each other and always with project goals and budget constraints.  High level security requirements mean extensive background checks and daily commitment to clean living, attention to detail, dedication to nation's welfare and constantly at beck and call at all hours.  Sacrifices are expected and made.

Audits and budgets are problematic because many facilities here are antique and well past their lifetime, especially any building associated with nuclear materials.  No facility has been successfully built for substantial quantities of nuclear material for the past 35 years, largely due to Congress' gross inability to recognize this need and fund one, but also due to poor planning and ever-escalating estimates.  This place is highly political.

I worked at the group with the highest level of disablity-retired employees due to stress-related illnesses.  Our positions were so critical, we were denied any of the voluntary RIF separation packages when downsizing.  Yet we were understaffed, overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated and badly used.  Upper level management's not interested in exit interviews.  A lot of lip service paid here.

Work achievements sometimes recognized but politically backfire in regards to co-worker interactions and/or loss of job position.

Just be sure to get a Scientist or R&D position, nothing lower, and stay away from engineering, project management, quality assurance,  nuclear safeguards, or accounting divisions.  If you're in any kind of supporting position, you feel the crunch - constantly.  Support positions are all about taking care of problems behind the scenes, letting the technical folks shine and be unbothered by trivia.

Also be sure to negotiate highest salary upon job offer as raises are inconsistent over time and across employee/division/job position lines.  And it's difficult to ascertain salaries to assure equitable distributions are made.  The Lab has lost 2 past court cases where they were found to pay women lower across the board as compared to men.  The gender gap is alive and well here.

Work/life issues/parental leave/part-time hours with respect to family are regarded as women's issue only and is expected and supported, as long as you're female.  For males, such career limitations are not tolerated and have led to job loss.  And although grievance process is fair and equitable, in the event of the Lab proven to be in the wrong, no power may reinstate an unfairly fired employee.  (And black-balling said employees from re-hire is alive and well, in many more than our case in point.)

Some managers great, others not.  Your job security and overall satisfaction depend on them.  Recognize that and suck up accordingly.

Also be sure any FMLA leave is accurate - HR has miscalculated employee hours, wrongly denying FMLA requests, whereupon managers have immediately demoted employees while they're proven to be, and supposedly protected under, legal FMLA.  Of course job security at that point is nil.  This is a separate employee from above case.  Again, all depends on who your manager is and how well they think of you, regardless of your performance or how highly it was last rated (even by them!)

Good luck and happy job hunting!

Overall, this is the best place I ever worked as a student.  They pay really well and have a graceful attitude towards students.  The leader of the group I worked for told the student interns that, yes, they hoped we were productive, and yes, they hoped we might eventually become full-time assets to the lab, but ultimately, their primary hope was that our work at the lab supplemented our education.  In other words, the internship program is just as much about serving us as it is about serving them.

One of the hard things about working at the lab is that everyone starts without a clearance.  For me, that meant I worked in a building separate from my group, and I was always working on side projects.  Even though that may often be the case for interns anyway, it made it difficult for me to stay motivated because I didn't feel important or involved.  My mentor did come to talk to me face-to-face about once a week, which was quite helpful, but other interns weren't so lucky.  Just know, if you're planning on working here as an intern, that it will probably help if you're an independent worker.

The only other difficulty is that most students have to learn a lot on their own or with minimal guidance.  The lab does very unique work, so most education won't quite prepare you for the job.  I felt a bit "in over my head" for a while.  It was a little stressful having to constantly ask busy people questions and look up every little thing.  Spending so much time learning new systems made it hard to see progress or consistently complete goals at first.  One of my bosses put too much pressure on me to be more productive than I could manage (he seemed to forget that not all people are atomic physicists), and a boss I had later was too easygoing and almost didn't seem to care if I got any work done at all.  Either of those situations mixed with having to learn a lot of new things independently can cause stress.  Of course, if you stick with it for a while, things definitely get better.  Especially if you end up getting a clearance.

The Good:
Overall a good place to work if you want a comfortable work environment, competitive compensation/benefits, and a nice place to live with plenty to see and do.  Flexible work hours, generous PTO, & 401(k) match. Job security...besides failing a drug test or say, murder, the tolerance for "mistakes" seems to be extremely high.  Exclusive hiking trails on Lab property, ~15 min from Ski Pajarito (some occasionally take a long lunch to squeeze in some turns). Spectacular scenery & local wildlife (bear, cougar, bobcat, deer, elk, etc.) Tons of free training & educational classes, workshops, lectures, & events both job-related & other.

The "Other":
Many cumbersome and outdated tools/resources/methods to accomplish even simple tasks, and little guidance is offered. Many long-time Lab employees possess a superiority complex with a tendency to treat contracted employees with less respect.  SLOW PROGRESS - banging your head against a wall takes a toll. Job security...besides failing a drug test or say, murder, the tolerance for "mistakes" seems to be extremely high (yes, this is both a pro & con if you happen to end up working with one of the less competent individuals who should have been let go, or not hired at all). Opportunity for advancement can be hit or miss - above average for some, less for others with equal competency & qualifications; depends on who you know.

There is a lot of amazing work that goes on at this laboratory. Research and productivity that benefits the entire world. Someone in the sciences or research engineering has limitless possibilities to participate in some of the most advanced discoveries of our time.
Outside of the sciences, in the maintenance and operations world it has been a roller coaster crash of egos and agendas. The male dominated, "good ol' boys'club" is rank with dishonesty, posturing, and inflated sense of individual purpose with questionable gains for the laboratory and the people working there. The recent transition from LANS to Triad brought in a regime of master puppeteers that thrive on pitting employees against each other, competing to see who can win the approval of the leadership team with subpar, cult-culture safety chants, game shows and reimagined stress ball awards. There are pockets of good, honest and enabling managers that strive to build the best, most productive teams possible through honest work assignments, real rewards and tangible results through engaging assignments. 
The hardest part of my job was fighting everyday to justify and prove my worth, beg for resources others are gatekeeping and make sure the programs i was responsible for were scoped, funded and executed with integrity. 
The most enjoyable part of my job was watching my team success and proudly celebrate the most challenging assignments. 

Retired from LANL. A typical day at work meant trying to find work and/or working on active projects. I learned new skills as long as they were related to my current job. Management has conflicting or swiftly changing priorities, often dictated by the Leadership Team or that day’s whimsy. Asking questions and telling the truth is discouraged if it is not “nice” (nice=totally supportive of what’s happening, even if it’s wrong). The jobs that are truly valued are those of scientists and secondly, engineers. Support staff receive little respect, even if they have post-graduate degrees. The culture still reflects a lot of the attitudes and insular thinking of the Manhattan Project era. This is disturbing. There is no work-life balance and workplace stress is very high. There is rampant ageism and not enough women and people of color are hired. The hardest part of the job was simply maneuvering around daily perceived “fires” and getting enough work to do. The most enjoyable part of the job was the friendships made. LANL says all the “right” things but reality is very different. Living in Los Alamos is basically like living in an upper class white town. It’s expensive. There is not enough housing, restaurants, shopping due to the controlling nature of the County administration. There is a prevalence of mental health issues in the population and little support for these folks and for the disabled. Yes, the Lab pays well and the benefits are a little better than average, but there is more to life than money. Just keep that in mind.

Depending on what division you're in at LANL, you could experience better management than here at TA-55.  Within TA-55 the management from your first line manager (supervisor) up to division level managers show a lack of respect.  They'll be nice to your face and then stab you in the back the moment you turn away.  They expect everyone to be a "yes" man and if you ask the hard questions to your management they limit your ability to move forward in your career.  They do this by limiting communication to you and move any sort of responsibility away from you.  There's a lack of any of communication in which management doesn't like having anything in writing (accountability) and will tell you one thing and do the opposite.  They don't value their employees and their "employee retention committee" was a complete joke.  My guess is that is was to show they were doing something about it so someone could get a huge promotion instead of actually caring what the results were.  Even though several employees are 'salary', they are treated like they're hourly.  If you want to move forward in your career you'll need to look at moving to a different division.  There's no hope of getting a promotion from within unless you're one of the group leader favorites.  Favoritism is rampant within TA-55.  

If you want to come to LANL, I'd suggest finding out what technical area you'd be working at.  If it's at TA-55, I'd turn away and not look back.  It's demoralizing, and you'll quickly regret coming here.  If it's somewhere else, I'd say it's a lot better and nothing like the prison cell you'd be stuck in behind the fence...

Being in a work environment that is inclusive and supportive of different types of people and opinions and thought processes. It creates an environment where everyone is always learning and open to share their ideas to better understand our world and the research we're doing, knowing that the team mind is better than an individual mind. And the importance placed on your work life balance with leadership prioritizing your life outside of work, this is a company that acknowledges that in order to be successful at work, you must prioritize your home life to bring the proper mental drive and focus to work.  

Leadership prioritizes safety and most meeting here at the lab start with a safety share to allow for an open environment to share information on keeping ourselves and our colleagues safe. 

The best part of working at LANL is being a part of an organization that sees the big picture of how the work each and every person here does directly effects national security and a focus on innovation and pushing our country forward with scientific exploration. 

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a premier national security research institution, delivering scientific and engineering solutions for the nation's most crucial and complex problems. Our primary responsibility is ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent.

The Los Alamos of today emphasizes worker safety, effective operational safeguards & security, and environmental stewardship, while outstanding science remains the foundation of the Laboratory.

In addition to supporting the Lab's core national security mission, our work advances bioscience, chemistry, computer science, earth and environmental sciences, materials science, and physics disciplines.

Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel play leading roles worldwide in basic and applied scientific research and technology. Whether it's conducting crucial experiments in space and at our linear accelerator in Northern New Mexico or developing breakthroughs in nanotechnology and determining how best to prevent the spread of
HIV and avian flu, the men and women of Los Alamos help lead the way.

Lab R&D helps curb a wide variety of threats to U.S. interests—whether it's the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the spread of deadly diseases, inadequate supplies of energy, or the effects of climate change.

LANL truly only rewards its R&D employees.  There is a two-tiered rewards system that benefits those with PhDs but disregards the regular, program employee.  I was a First Line Manager and do not recommend it for anyone.  First off, their FLMs exist solely for the purposes of scapegoating.  When something goes wrong, the FLM is hung out to dry and served up as the sacrificial lamb for top management.  The work expectations for FLMs is unrealistic so you can expect to fail at meeting expectations on a daily basis.  Don't worry, however, because everyone is looking the other way up until something goes wrong, and you're needed to save the career of your Group or Division Leader.  I was rated as a Core Performer every year I worked at LANL, yet my annual pay raises did not keep up with the rate of inflation.  I lost purchasing power every year.  In addition to that, the health benefits turned down my son for a biologic that he needed, saying the drug was not medically necessary (the mark of a self-insured BCBS entity).  As soon as I left LANL for another company, his medicine was immediately approved.  I enjoyed working with my colleagues and did not want to leave, but loosing ground pay wise every year to inflation can only be enjoyed for so long until your significant other makes enough noise and you have to look for something else.

It's a good work-life balance and interesting work, but as a computer scientist, you will be criminally underpaid. They cannot keep any computer scientists long term, and will typically only stay for a few years, because they know they can leave to get better pay elsewhere.

They can't do much about that due to federal contracting, and your salary will get pulled down to other scientist pay levels --- who are paid higher than they would be outside of the lab, so on balance it looks like pay is high, but not for computer scientists. Additionally, they have no problems reducing benefits, (again federal contract constraints) as back in 2008 when the lab when privately owned, the old pensioners still had their pension, while the new hires only got a 401k. Recently, they are wiping out existing banked sick leave for existing employees (losing 209 hours for myself) and reducing total time off compensation for a new PTO system. HR can't understand why people might be upset...

It's a good job if you like science and can deal with the worst of both government and corporate red tape, and good pay if you are a general scientist or engineer. Terrible pay for computer scientists and software engineers, with continually racing benefits to the bottom.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
R&d engineer 17 salaries reported	$142,324 per year
Postdoctoral research associate 12 salaries reported	$101,363 per year
Scientist 8 salaries reported	$157,875 per year
Senior scientist 3 salaries reported	$165,667 per year
Postdoctoral fellow 13 salaries reported	$97,692 per year

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