National Lab scientist here. Too much of a revolving door has led to most National Labs becoming like universities now. LBNL is now effectively a UC Berkeley di

National Lab scientist here. Too much of a revolving door has led to most National Labs becoming like universities now. LBNL is now effectively a UC Berkeley division (check it, their Lab directors, associate directors, division directors are all Berkeley faculty). Secondly, DOE now is obsessed with the same productivity metrics, which flows down from the Congress. Dollars per paper has become the metric - which means you are trying to tighten the productivity screws all the time. For example, I had five papers last year and was just barely FC (fully contributing) and narrowly escaped getting written up for unsatisfactory productivity. Even worse, unlike tenure, national lab scientist positions are entirely soft money funded. This state of affairs results in a situation where you need to be bringing in over half a million dollars per year to pay your salary+overhead if you are a famous person.