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Looking Inside A Changing JPL
Anonymous Coward writes "Space.com is running a series called Inside JPL. The first part is called 'Dark times: hope on the heels of failure.'
It's an interesting read discussing a little history, and management changes underway to make JPL more efficient. Some of the changes include throwing out the rules." The history is certainly interesting and well worth reading, but the parts about changing management are a bit rah-rah and cliche-ridden for me.
I know. I worked there as an IT consultant right about the time the Mars Rover made them look good - for a couple of brief months.
But the management incompetence I witnessed at JPL was truly monumental. They are a poster child for how not to manage IT. No one is really responsible for anything (at least, not in their IT support division). It's all management by committee, leavened with lots of capriciousness and internal politics. Their IT "support" staff is doing well to show up for work at all, much less for meetings - they simply overschedule meetings and only go to the ones with the most powerful chairperson. It is a nightmare trying to get anything done at JPL because everyone has their own Machiavellian loyalties and agendas, and these are all hidden. What does is say that JPL actually flew _two_ payloads right into the ground on Mars - at $millions of _your_ taxpayor dollars apiece? JPL is too bloated.
NASA should just fire everyone in "management" at JPL, void all their IT support contracts, then start over hiring "the best and the brightest" again, and rebid the IT support to firms who care. If NASA needs to save money, they should strip down JPL, seriously.
It's not just JPL. I used to work at Goddard and have friends scattered around other NASA centers and aerospace companies as well. Or should I say I have friends who used to work at these places. Most of us have left for pastures that, while they may not be "green" are at least less black.
Excessive, idiotic rules administered by frightened, incompetent control freaks are ruining space industry in this country. I suspect Goldin has actually made things worse. Why? Instead of freeing people up to do innovative things (the only real way to make things "faster, better, cheaper"), low and midlevel management simply flogged people to spend more time at work and obey management. In short, they pursued a typical crusade against "waste".
A tragically funny story from Goddard might amuse /.ers. Some Goddard scientists began helping school teachers plan and carry out science lessons by participating in k-12 education newsgroups. Did management praise these people for their initiative? No. Rather the Net police put a stop to this work. You see, such advice wasn't part of the scientists' jobs. They were using their government accounts for "personal" reasons. Hmm. Talk about "get assault rifle, insert clip, point at foot and pull trigger until clip is empty."
AARRGH!!!!
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
When I was at Caltech Prefrosh, we took a tour of JPL and I noticed that in the main control room they had two "official JPL time" clocks - really big digital displays that hang over the workstations - that were off by one second.
Also, the lady at the reception desk in their space exploration museum had her passwords on a Post-it note on her monitor. And that was just the tour...
I'm a second generation JPL employee... that is, I'm the son of a JPL employee, also employed at JPL. My dad quit from jpl 10 years ago, when the big managerial shakedowns occurred. He describes it as becoming less about science and exploration of the universe and more about rules. I have to agree with him. But the scientists themselves haven't changed. I have never met so many personally motivated, focused people anywhere else in my life. Some of these guys work long hours (without pay) programming new utilities for their own use. A friend of mine was told not to write a program, which he went ahead and did anyways on his own time. Now its the most used app in my section! And if he had listened to his manager, it never would have happened. So where are the problems at JPL? Wasteful excess staff. We have more managers than we need, by far. Hell, our "ethics" staff is probably spending valuable money making sure we don't bid on ebay using our JPL email addresses. In fact, they might crack down on me for posting on /.
Ah well. My point is that JPL has some of the finest, most science oriented personell on earth, and given the funding, they would colonize mars in a decade. But scientists need less rules, not more. We came this far in an organization founded by a pyromaniac satanist(no, really), and I think we should return to that pioneering spirit. Maybe include a budget for chicken sacrifices.
skye