RIFs at LANL, LLNL or beyond

I have not said much about RIFs recently.

I have resisted the urge to post URLs about the latest rumor of the day.

To me, the reason to say little right now is that the RIFs are inevitable. There is no money to prevent them and Complex Transformation will drive the RIFs.

The only unanswered questions are:

1. How many people will be RIFed?
2. When will they be RIFed?
3. How will the survivors make deliverables on time?
4. Will the towns be livable after the RIFs?

The optimal strategy for surviving a RIF is individualistic and must be adopted by each motivated person. I am helping a few people with their own strategies at the moment.

The optimal strategy does not seem to depend strongly on the answers to the questions listed above.

My short answers to the questions currently are:

1. At least 5,000 across the DOE weapons labs.
2. In the next month
3. They won't
4. Probably not, at least for 5 to ten years.

Denouement - A better strategy for a standard company might be to leave the threat of a RIF in the air while quietly letting people go until budget goals are met. Then the company announces that there will be no RIF, for instance in time for Christmas. The actual number of people who no longer work for the company is the same as it would be if the RIF was announced, but the company gets to claim that they worked hard and avoided a RIF. From the individual employee's point of view, the results are the same and all of the questions above still apply.

Just a thought.