Scientists and engineers beware - Anonymous employee SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Employee Review

- Scientists beware: This is not like other national labs. SLAC's directions are decided by Stanford faculty, not scientists. Non-faculty members are not allowed to apply for external grants (except for "career award" grants). Internal grants do not go to projects that are not closely aligned with SLAC's directions. - Engineers beware: Unlike what the director says, engineers are less important than scientists, because, of course, science is top priority here. Scientists know this, and behave accordingly in daily conversations. Attempts to reduce "technical debt" is considered unimportant and won't be approved. Actually, creating technical debt makes more sense, because that keeps the jobs. Scientists don't care about good engineering as long as it works. In 2016 the windows and the unix networks are still separate. One has to change passwords on different machines. - Because of the nature of the work (i.e. all for science), project scope creep happens a lot. If you heroically save a project, you will be rewarded with more work of the same nature. Project resources do increase when things go bad, but it won't become your compensation. There is no stock to give. Small (like 5k) bonuses exist, but require one to stay for *two* years. BTW in case you care, credit distribution involving academic people (faculty, postdocs and students) is pre-determined: no heroic save can promote you on an existing author list.