In short, the Voyager spacecraft were designed (after considerable design and operational experience from Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft) to be able to operate for a long time largely automatically without too much hand-holding. All major systems are multiply redundant and may be remotely turned on and off. While there has been personnel turnover on the program, it has not been of a magnitude to jeopardize program continuation. Finally, program management has been media savvy and well politically connected ensuring that operations are still funded. (Contrast with other missions such as Magellan to Venus which was deorbited while it still had propellant reserve leaving some portions of the planet unmapped)
JPL has (or had?) a "retiree badge" program that permitted retired staff to continue to access their office. Many programs benefited from highly knowledgeable personnel essentially continuing to report to the office every day without pay (not being paid comes with the luxury of not having to worry about being laid off if your charge accounts don’t have enough funds!) It was an absolute privilege to learn from these people.
I think it is inevitable that organizational "culture" changes. The tricky part is figuring out exactly what parts need change and what parts don’t.
For example JPL used to have beauty pageants ("Miss Guided Missile"). More recently, management appears to be trying to adopt policies and procedures from some venture funded commercial space companies. It is not clear how helpful these efforts will be given that these organizations are in fundamentally different businesses.
I wonder what the fact of the matter is. It'd be rather hilarious if Humans have been shooting ourselves in the feet for the last few decades with many of our social engineering initiatives. And the reproduction rates chart is ugly.
I wonder what the fact of that matter is. Are reproduction rates dropping because women aren't as pressured to bear children due to those silly 'social engineering initiatives'?
Modern information access seems to have led to the sinking ship feeling, across many of the most prosperous countries, and so effectively that world wars, deadlier pandemics, and thermonuclear brinkmanship can scarcely compare.
I guarantee you that a run of the mill MBA program will say something about institutional knowledge being important.
You’re needlessly and unjustifiably finding an excuse to dunk on something that you know people here dislike, despite it having very little to do with the actual topic. Which…fine. But you’re also so keen to do it that you aren’t even correct. Please stop projecting every gripe you have with your boss onto this mythical “evil MBA”.
It means that they are the most valuable employees, because their productivity per dollar is infinite.
It also means that when you sort all the (non-executive, of course!) employees by total comp in preparation for layoffs to make the budget look better, they are at the bottom of the list.
We do something similar at my job for the greybeards that were very influential on our current projects. They "retire" but are retained as a very part time employee that only get paid if we need to bring them in for a day or two to help answer some questions. The managers love it because they don't need to find work for this person, pay for any benefits, or need to get approvals to pay them like contractors. As long as we keep doing relevant work to their expertise, they will continue being retained. There is a limit for how many hours they can put in because these people are incredibly expensive as they usually retire at the top engineer level and retain the equivalent hourly wage for that position.
Paying someone as sporadically as you would a contractor but they’re only getting their usual hourly wage? Doesn’t sound expensive to me. Sounds like a ridiculously good deal for the employer.
Yeah! Being almost 50 years old it's not like people is not working there anymore but that probably a bunch of people in the original project has already died!
JPL has (or had?) a "retiree badge" program that permitted retired staff to continue to access their office. Many programs benefited from highly knowledgeable personnel essentially continuing to report to the office every day without pay (not being paid comes with the luxury of not having to worry about being laid off if your charge accounts don’t have enough funds!) It was an absolute privilege to learn from these people.