NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Lays Off 300 Engineers

Ghost of Von Karmen writes "NASA JPL, the lab that brought us missions such as Voyager, Cassini, and the Mars Exploration Rovers will eliminate about 300 engineering related positions due to Congressional budget cuts, according to various sources. The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space. Prof. Elachi, head of JPL has indicated that the lab may pursue Department of Defense contracts to minimize additional reductions in personnel."

Comments

Yeah right

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space.

The cuts reflect the tremendous cost of warmongering around the world...

Re:Yeah right

[JeffSh]

i think this could be the first +5, Troll i've ever seen on slashdot.

Re:Yeah right

[Kickboy12]

Yeah. It's sad, isn't it? We live in a world where finding more advanced ways of killing people is more important than understanding the universe.

Re:Yeah right

[Jeremi]

Interestingly enough, Iraq was a secular state. It looks like it will become an Islamic state in the near future, thanks to our efforts.

Re:Yeah right

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Why did this guy get a 'troll' score?? He's got a point!

Actually NASA's budget has not increased or decreased significantly, and while I'm not a fan of warmongering, I don't think that warmongering is getting in the way of NASA's budget, which is tiny in comparison. NASA is getting the same money but is shifting priorities around in order to retire the shuttle earlier. This is a good thing. People are being laid off at some NASA centers, and others are hiring.

Re:Yeah right

[cmacb]

"This is a good thing. People are being laid off at some NASA centers, and others are hiring."

Your problem my friend is that you are looking at the big picture instead of just some microscopic Bush-hating sliver of it.

First of all, the story is mischaracterized here. From one of the articles:

"McGregor said the cuts would include support staff, engineering and technology positions, though she declined to give specifics. Scientist positions "are a little bit different," she said, because most scientists receive grants for their research."

The articles also say that a lot of the cuts will be through attrition (for the not-so-literate: that means normal retirements, job changes etc.), and affects mostly "support" positions and contractors, not scientists. Translation: "the cafeteria will no longer be open until 5PM."

Contrary to popular belief (it would seem), erstwhile rocket scientists are not being deployed to Iraq.

In fact there have been many people for years that have argued that the manned program, PARTICULARLY the Shuttle program took way too much of the NASA budget away from more pure forms of space research, and now, to rescue and re-invent that effort we are doing it again. But many of us have too short an attention span, and had our vision focused to only what it reported in the sensationalist headlines (including the Slashdot ones). Congratulations on being in the well informed minority.

I'll now proceed to view some of the wild and crazy popular-media inspired posts to see what joe-armchair thinks about the world.

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

affects mostly "support" positions and contractors, not scientists. Translation: "the cafeteria will no longer be open until 5PM."

First, JPL is primarily an engineering organization, not a science one. About 5% of the technical people are titled as "scientists," though about 30% of the technical people have PhDs, and another ~30% masters degrees. And as much as it would offend many of both the scientists and engineers to hear it, many of the "scientists" do a lot of engineering, and many of the "engineers" do more than a little science. In some areas the people who do R&D (as opposed to routine design work) will get hit because their low level organizations don't value R&D (strange but true), even though the R&D people might have money and support from project offices. And even though they aren't actively laying off scientists, all NASA has to do is be slow about delivering on the grants (not new at all-- sometimes they deliver money a year or more late) and scientists are effectively laid off because they have no money. I know scientists who are just as worried as engineers about the situation. And who do you think designs hardware and cuts metal for most of the science work? Engineers and technicians.

The cuts include around 200 people in the engineering and science directorate, which is relatively lean on "support staff." Much of the support stuff was outsourced in the "5000 by 2000" under Dan Goldin (reduce the JPL staff to 5000 heads by the year 2000). The cafeteria used to be contractors and is now Caltech Food Service (but not JPL staff). The police force was outsourced. I think the firefighters are still staff. The desktop computing services was outsourced. I think the copy shops have been run by contractors since as far back as I remember.

About 100 of the 300 will come from outside the Engineering and Science directorate, which includes procurement and subcontracts, QA (people love to hate QA, but they do some pretty useful things, and there are people there who do real engineering, like qualifying electronic parts for space environments), business analysts and schedulers (people who track all the boring stuff for the engineers), proposal support (people who stay up all night to make the engineers' and scientists' proposals look good--a lot of money comes in via proposals), and there are probably more.

On top of this, something like 100-200 (or more, it's been kind of fuzzy) contractors who are resident on lab will also be dropped (effectively laid off), many of whom are doing engineering work that JPL couldn't otherwise get done (that's why they get brought in). Many of them are quite talented, and there aren't staff people who can do what they're doing, even though the work hasn't been cancelled, just the positions.

The weird thing is that normally layoffs occur when money is cut or projects are cancelled (and that generally makes sense), but this time people are being laid off while they have work, basically setting up a bunch of tasks for failure. A lot of people got laid off after the two Mars rovers delivered (I bet you didn't hear about that-- there were stacks of awards that didn't get delivered because the people who earned them had been laid off when they delivered and were no longer funded). This one just seems strange, and poorly thought out and poorly communicated-- the public statements don't add up in the context of how money and employment work at JPL.

Always be skeptical of the PR flaks, whether they're bringing good news or bad.

-1: Flamebait

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

At the same time, we feel fortunate that we have the work ahead of us that we do."

At the same time I feel sad that something as beneficial to science, humanity, technology, economy, and to our lives can be cut so easily. But when it comes to the military or pork projects, a blank check is issued.

Write your Congressman TODAY!

[Derling Whirvish]

This is serious and incredibly stupid. Do not let this pass without contacting you Congressman and telling tham how incredibly stupid and short-sighted this really is.

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Commenting here will accomplish nothing. You MUST write your Congressional representative. Be civil.

Re:Write your Congressman TODAY!

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

This is serious and incredibly stupid.

I'm a JPL employee. I'm not a manager or anything, but here's how I understand the situation.

While this is serious and unfortunate for the people being laid off, I don't think that NASA's priorities are necessarily misplaced in this case. Mike Griffin, the new NASA administrator, has made it his top goal to get the replacement for the space shuttle ready as soon as possible - much faster than had been planned previously. This is a very good thing - everyone I know at NASA is applauding this.

NASA's overall budget has not changed significantly. As a result, Griffin had to make the tough decision to cancel a few programs, including one big robotic mission, in order to put more money into retiring the shuttle. Very importantly, he did not cancel any Earth science programs, and didn't cancel any Mars exploration programs.

It's unfortunate that this has affected JPL so much (more than all other NASA centers except Ames), and to be totally honest morale is pretty low at the lab right now because this caught everyone by surprise. But the truth is that JPL's director, Charles Elachi, has been very forthcoming and frank about the whole thing, and really seems to be making a serious effort to be fair about the layoffs. And even though I may not agree with every decision they make, I have enormous respect for both Elachi and Griffin. They're both scientists/engineers, not MBAs or something like that (the first NASA administrator Bush appointed was an accountant - he had no clue what he was doing), and they have extremely impressive credentials. They're smart, honest, and very experienced, and they're both trying to do what's best for NASA in the long run.

Another reason NOT to go into science/engineering

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And I'm sure somebody will say that education is still usefull- despite this becoming almost a cliche story. You never hear "Major Labortory/Tech Company to lay off C-level exectutives in an attempt to keep R&D running". Why would any young person go into science or technology if this is the way they treat people?

Wish I had a violin...

[dada21]

One of my main CNC/machining suppliers does 20% of his business with NASA but they account for 95% of his profits.

I recently saw some of his invoices and NASA is typical government waste. Take your $300 toilet seats and $600 screw drivers and double it.

I really want the FOIA to open up every invoice for public consumption in PDF real time. NASA is no friend of the taxpayers.

Is NASA really getting a budget cut or did they just overspend with the cronies again?

Re:Wish I had a violin...

[earthforce_1]

I used to work for a company that did military contracts, (your proverbial $500 screwdriver) and I could tell you that in many cases they were selling them at a loss. The $500 screwdriver contract would read as follows:

You will need a certificate from the foundary certifing that it does not contain substance X or Y, and no more than ### ppm of element Z. This must be signed off by the chief metalurgist. Each screwdriver shall be x-rayed to ensure it contains no manufacturing defects.

At least one screwdriver from each lot must be tested to destruction, to ensure it has the required strength and does not emit any toxic fumes while being blown up or burned.

The screwdriver contract shall contain no less than 500 pages, detailing stuff like exactly what angles the fillets shall be on the handle, the minimum torque strength of the shaft, etc. These specification shall be revised no less than 3 times throughout the program, sending the manufacturer back to the drawing board on each occasion.

Each screwdriver shall be individually serial numbered, and come with a 50 page manual detailing proper screwdriver storage procedures, table listing 14 digit part numbers for all screws that can be adjusted with it, and detailed pictorials showing how the screwdriver shall be used.

The specifications for military semiconductors were so onerous that most part manufacturers simply gave up on it. I remember stuff like having to manually pull each bonding wire to test its strength, lengthy temerature soaks, etc. This led to the rise of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) manufacturing, which essentially modified commercial grade components for military use.

Robots are cheaper

[abradsn]

What stupidity is this? Robots are the cheapest way to explore space. The technology advances in robotics actually have real use on Earth. Yep, let's remove the federally funded program that has the most impact at NASA and replace it with a pipe dream of 2 missions. One to the moon, and one to mars. What then. Astronaut: Hmm, hey it would be nice to have some remote control robots out there in the harshest environments ever... or, Astronaut: Let's climb into a plastic bag filled with air and dance around in a low G environment. Oops, don't fall down, or you puncture your suit and quickly die.

Re:Anyone know the real unemployment rate in the U

[teutonic_leech]

During some news report I actually heard that it was closer to around 8-10% - they're a lot more honest in Europe in how they count people without employment. Basically, in Europe:

unemployed = No income

In the U.S.:

unemployed = Collecting unemployment

Re:America's space strategy

[njchick]

The problem is, JPL is not making rockets. JPL creates unique exploration systems, that no corporation (American or Chinese) would make for profit. I'm all for NASA using commercial launchers whenever possible, but the payload has to be made by scientists.

I believe money can be much better spent on robotic exploration rather than on manned missions. I also think the return on investment in terms of new technology is going to be better per money spent (although manned expeditions cost much more).

Of the 12 astronauts that walked on the Moon, only one was a geologist. I'm afraid this will happen again on the Moon and on Mars, if (and it's a big if) the US administrations will have sufficient will and attention span to make astronauts get there at all.

Re:Another reason NOT to go into science/engineeri

[rolfwind]

Not only this, but it used be that the top executive at Fortune 500 companies 20 years age got something like 20X what a "normal" lay person gets paid (though I'm sure stock options were there aplenty to). These days it's ballooned to ballooned to 50x and up. And when they do get laid off, they have so many parachute clauses and termination pay-offs that being laid-off is the best thing that could have every happened to them - you don't even have to be good at your job - witness Carlo Fiorina at HP. Or Meg Whitman at Ebay - (she's a billionaire from heading ebay! And I was there from the beginning, DESPITE her blunders, it was going up anyway, if anything it was a free ride).

Sorry if it seems I'm picking on the girls, these just happen to be the companies I follow--.--, there are percentage wise also a lot of crappy guy CEOs - Darl McBride for one.

The CEO of Costco is one of those people I still look up to in business, most of the rest are ratbags willing to sell out the company in order to grab as much as they can in their short tenors as leaders. The Costco CEO (and co-founder, I believe) only pays himself 250,000 a year and insists on paying his workers a decent wage (something like 15-16 dollars/hour to start with) plus health benefits unlike Walmart.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_22 /b3885011_mz001.htm

Not a $600 screwdriver problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently work on a JPL project.

We've been having budget problems for a while now. Two big causes are Hubble and the President's space exploration plan. We got a budget cut when they decided they wanted to investigate repairing Hubble. Then we got more cuts to divert money to the President's plan.

Working here is nothing like working for industry. We do things as efficiently as we can because we have barely enough money to keep operating. We use free software tools when we can, we only buy computers when they go on sale, etc.

Keep in mind the highly talented and educated engineers here are working for much less money than they would get in industry because they think it is worthwhile.

The Inside Opinion

[SkiGuyUSC]

I'm a software engineer at JPL and I just thought I'd give my two cents worth. Layoffs are never a good thing, but it's not as though this is the first time either. There are always upturns and downturns. There is a lot of talk about congressional budget cuts, which is obviously the source of despair.

I'm not saying it's the *only* reason, but the president's emphasis on manned missions does certainly have an impact on JPL operations. JPL, as many of you know, specializes in delivering science data to interested parties. The majority of this data comes from unmanned missions (most of which were mentioned previously). The major emphasis from the government is now on retiring the shuttle and advancing to more sophisticated exploration vehicles. Recent snafus certainly haven't helped. I think in the end, however, things will come back around. New manned exploration almost certainly will not come about devoid of casualties. When human life becomes a concern again, I think views will change.

On the other hand, I've heard that some of the other NASA centers will be hit much harder. Considering JPL has almost 5500 employees (and the number of employees has been on the rise for awhile now), I personally think it could have been much worse.

Anyway, I don't claim to be the inside expert, just thought I'd share.