An hypothesis

It seems that LANL is evolving under locally rational decision making. Each decision maker sees him or herself as making rational decisions in their best interest.

The difficulty is that many of the long time LANL staff do not understand the logic of the decisions and do not want change.

So, the hypothesis is that near term events at LANL are consistent with NNSA's Complex 2030 plan as executed by a number of people working in their own best interest and that there is little malevolence involved.

Is this hypothesis wrong?

Presentations

The work on financial planning and on job catching (not just hunting but catching) is yielding a multi-audience Power Point presentation. The first two versions of this presentation were given to postdocs at LANL. Due to very positive responses and requests for broader presentations, I now have a flexible hyperlinked version.

Ask for details.

New topics 2

I have been working on understanding the essence of a few puzzles. Now I think that I understand them.

Here are the puzzles.

1. How much is a person actually worth in terms of lifetime income with compounding? Where does this worth go? Can a person recapture more of their own worth?

I now have quantitative measures of all of this. I also have tested strategies that would allow a person to recapture more of their own worth.

2. In working at LANL, in making a solid financial plan, or in job hunting, what is the effect of a person's own internal emotional world view on the actions that they are willing to make and on the person's successes in these endeavors?

The effects seem to usually be negative. As far as I can find out, most of us make emotional decisions cloaked in a thin veil of rationality. We can, though, learn to make decisions that are more positive for us.

3. At what age can a person first afford to retire?

It turns out that there is a robust quantitative individualized solution to this question.

4. In order to increase your own fiscal health, a good strategy is to systematically decrease your expenses.

We now have worksheets that make this difficult task easier to do.

Post doc tips - conversion to staff member

If you are thinking of converting to a technical staff member, you need to talk to someone with a broad understanding of DOE, LANL, and NNSA (preferably me ;-) ) and you need to do it soon.

Practical results

For the people who have chosen to contact me or Bart, together, we are making solid progress.

For instance, a number of resumes have become much more competitive in the job market and a number of people are now in control of their financial futures.

Formal talk on Financial Planning and Job Hunting

Over the last couple of weeks, I have given a repeat of the talk

Practical Financial Planning and Job Hunting for Scientists

The talk is about 42 minutes long and contains 67 Power Point slides (Some go by very fast and are mood setters.)

The question and answer period after the talk lasted over an hour for those who had the time.

I am willing to present this talk again to groups of ten or more people or to give a synopsis to those who contact me.