Another round of layoffs at JPL
The management at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California today announced it will be laying off 550 people this week, about 11% of its work force.
As part of this effort, JPL is undergoing a realignment of its workforce, including a reduction in staff. This reduction — part of a reorganization that began in July and not related to the current government shutdown — will affect approximately 550 of our colleagues across technical, business, and support areas. Employees will be notified of their status on Tuesday, Oct. 14.
As the statement makes clear, this reduction is unrelated to the government shutdown, and is also mostly unrelated directly to the 24% budget cut the Trump administration wishes to impose on NASA. JPL has had major management issues in the last few years, including two previous rounds of layoffs of similar amounts. Much of these budget issues stem from the cancellation by NASA of the Mars sample return mission, which JPL was to play a major part. That money is gone, and even if the mission is resurrected, JPL is almost certainly not going to play a major part.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The management at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California today announced it will be laying off 550 people this week, about 11% of its work force.
As part of this effort, JPL is undergoing a realignment of its workforce, including a reduction in staff. This reduction — part of a reorganization that began in July and not related to the current government shutdown — will affect approximately 550 of our colleagues across technical, business, and support areas. Employees will be notified of their status on Tuesday, Oct. 14.
As the statement makes clear, this reduction is unrelated to the government shutdown, and is also mostly unrelated directly to the 24% budget cut the Trump administration wishes to impose on NASA. JPL has had major management issues in the last few years, including two previous rounds of layoffs of similar amounts. Much of these budget issues stem from the cancellation by NASA of the Mars sample return mission, which JPL was to play a major part. That money is gone, and even if the mission is resurrected, JPL is almost certainly not going to play a major part.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
We seem now to be living in an era of long-delayed consequences finally being visited upon the long-deserving. May it continue.
I have heard, several times now, in podcasts and articles, that efficient work was punished.
Completing a project under budget and early was grounds for dressing down and possibly being reassigned.
This is the side effects of living off of congressional apportionments and doing everything to milk them to the max.
I always hear “Social Security is going broke” but I never hear “NASA is going broke” or “The Department of Ecology is going broke”.
I guess I would have been fired then. I always treated company property better than my own.
I had to make all copies since I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it. Bought office supplies, etc.
James Street wrote: “I always hear ‘Social Security is going broke’ but I never hear ‘NASA is going broke’ or ‘The Department of Ecology is going broke’.”
NASA and The Department of Ecology (DOE) are funded from the general fund, which is to say from our income taxes, excise taxes, alcohol taxes, etc. These will never run out, and if we don’t collect as much of these taxes as Congress spends, then Congress approves a larger national debt to sell more bonds — or the Treasury Department to prints more money — to make up for the lack of federal income.
Social Security, like Medicare, are funded through special payroll taxes, and if those taxes are insufficient to cover the outlays, then there is no legal recourse. Social Security and Medicare are funds that can run out, just as any Ponzi scheme (previously: bubble scheme, before Ponzi, who was 15 years before Social Security, so FDR knew that he was creating a bubble scheme). Isn’t it fun that government can make things so complex that even government cannot understand them and the ramifications of having them? So what may appear to be a good idea (e.g. Obamacare) can actually be such a hideous mistake that no one dares make corrections for fear of admitting error.
Fortunately, Social Security won’t go broke for another couple of years, or months (or I don’t remember when) giving government an opportunity to do something about it, like breaking the promises made by the Social Security Administration. Four decades ago, they started taxing Social Security as an income tax,, if the recipient’s income was too high, thus moving Social Security funds into the general fund. No wonder Social Security is on the verge of going broke, Congress raided it for four decades.