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

[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.

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.