Anonymous
07/22/2025 14:42
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
I'm sorry they're failing to meet your normal RAND standards for lit reviews and Stata code.
I'm sorry that all of your reports have to be turned into "expert insights" because nobody will sign-off on them.
Not mine. I had a lot of issues with RAND, so I'm not there. See how that goes? You, too, could do that if you had external options.
In better times, GER would be an amusement, a collection of navel-gazing coders who cannot compose the English language and so invented a next-word predictor that could - then marketed it as a super-intelligent force that will take over the planet and use humans for fuel.
Unfortunately, GER has virtually nothing to do with what RAND provides at core and placing it in the dominant position it now occupies provides little more than charge codes for a few legacy staff and paid intellectual masturbation for a new cadre of coders who could not find real work in commercial industry or as SETAs. I am not surprised that they use the unearned gravitas of being a RAND researcher to publish idiotic commentaries.
I can vouch for the ridiculously poor quality of the resulting GER products - the outcomes upon which RAND relies to maintain its integrity. Crap.
As for AI being the future, that is hard to argue with. I will declare emphatically that large language models and all the rainbow of flavors erupting from the ass thereof including retrieval augmented generators and LLM-based coding tools are most definitely not the future. Resources should be devoted to re-purposing data centers as skating rinks and homeless shelters. The cult that has grown from the posturing of scores of venture capitalists makes Elizabeth Holmes look like the Pope. No, artificial general intelligence is not around the corner. No, artificial neural networks are not the medium for AGI. No, looking for some practical way to make money from LLMs will not recover the investment. Yes, the current crop of students and researchers leveraging LLMs instead of doing the actual work degrades the net human intellectual capacity of any given field going forward - especially given the perception of near-term savings in time and resources.
It is artificial stupidity.
I blame RAND’s board who sold the corporate brand for $75 million of donations to GER at the expense of most everything else.
Anonymous
07/22/2025 11:10
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
I'm sorry they're failing to meet your normal RAND standards for lit reviews and Stata code.
I'm sorry that all of your reports have to be turned into "expert insights" because nobody will sign-off on them.
Not mine. I had a lot of issues with RAND, so I'm not there. See how that goes? You, too, could do that if you had external options.
In better times, GER would be an amusement, a collection of navel-gazing coders who cannot compose the English language and so invented a next-word predictor that could - then marketed it as a super-intelligent force that will take over the planet and use humans for fuel.
Unfortunately, GER has virtually nothing to do with what RAND provides at core and placing it in the dominant position it now occupies provides little more than charge codes for a few legacy staff and paid intellectual masturbation for a new cadre of coders who could not find real work in commercial industry or as SETAs. I am not surprised that they use the unearned gravitas of being a RAND researcher to publish idiotic commentaries.
I can vouch for the ridiculously poor quality of the resulting GER products - the outcomes upon which RAND relies to maintain its integrity. Crap.
As for AI being the future, that is hard to argue with. I will declare emphatically that large language models and all the rainbow of flavors erupting from the ass thereof including retrieval augmented generators and LLM-based coding tools are most definitely not the future. Resources should be devoted to re-purposing data centers as skating rinks and homeless shelters. The cult that has grown from the posturing of scores of venture capitalists makes Elizabeth Holmes look like the Pope. No, artificial general intelligence is not around the corner. No, artificial neural networks are not the medium for AGI. No, looking for some practical way to make money from LLMs will not recover the investment. Yes, the current crop of students and researchers leveraging LLMs instead of doing the actual work degrades the net human intellectual capacity of any given field going forward - especially given the perception of near-term savings in time and resources.
It is artificial stupidity.
Anonymous
07/22/2025 10:47
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:ArsTechnica.com, in an article primarily about NASa Goddard, reports the Jet Propulsion Lab, a NASA FFRDC operated by CalTech, had a 10% layoff last year and is expecting more layoffs soon.
Awful. Absolutely awful. JPL is an American treasure.
Anonymous
07/22/2025 10:34
Subject: Re:FFRDCs
The European's are opening their doors to American space talent
Anonymous
07/22/2025 07:39
Subject: FFRDCs
ArsTechnica.com, in an article primarily about NASa Goddard, reports the Jet Propulsion Lab, a NASA FFRDC operated by CalTech, had a 10% layoff last year and is expecting more layoffs soon.
Anonymous
07/17/2025 09:23
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
I'm sorry they're failing to meet your normal RAND standards for lit reviews and Stata code.
I'm sorry that all of your reports have to be turned into "expert insights" because nobody will sign-off on them.
Not mine. I had a lot of issues with RAND, so I'm not there. See how that goes? You, too, could do that if you had external options.
Speaking as a longtime RAND sponsor, the political heat from these opinion pieces is becoming a problem.
Anonymous
07/17/2025 08:16
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
I'm sorry they're failing to meet your normal RAND standards for lit reviews and Stata code.
I'm sorry that all of your reports have to be turned into "expert insights" because nobody will sign-off on them.
Not mine. I had a lot of issues with RAND, so I'm not there. See how that goes? You, too, could do that if you had external options.
Anonymous
07/17/2025 02:13
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
I'm sorry they're failing to meet your normal RAND standards for lit reviews and Stata code.
I heard there's a ton of GER docs that can't pass basic quality standards at RAND. The doc issues are beyond just coding and literature review problems.
Anonymous
07/17/2025 01:41
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
I'm sorry they're failing to meet your normal RAND standards for lit reviews and Stata code.
I'm sorry that all of your reports have to be turned into "expert insights" because nobody will sign-off on them.
Anonymous
07/16/2025 23:40
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
I'm sorry they're failing to meet your normal RAND standards for lit reviews and Stata code.
Anonymous
07/16/2025 22:28
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Most of these jobs are 1-year contract positions in GER which has a lot of non-phds who are cosplaying as researchers by writing opinion pieces.
Anonymous
07/16/2025 16:50
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
AI is the future.
Anonymous
07/16/2025 13:37
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:It was announced in an all-hands. Will likely impact the folks supporting non-DoD portfolios the most.
That is terrible. Sadly, the rank-and-file will be hit the hardest and the entrenched, self-preserving management types will close ranks.
Anonymous
07/16/2025 12:32
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/
Not so much. 10 research jobs, of which 8 are AI, one is on China stuff, and one is for a management slot that may also be filled internally. No big open “economist” or “engineer” positions, like in better times.
Anonymous
07/15/2025 18:23
Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Are FFRDC projects returning — either getting g new ones or turning old ones back on?
RAND is still way down on sales for all of their FFRDCs.
Business is fine at RAND.
Rand Corp is still hiring…..
https://rand.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External_Career_Site/