[zasz]

That's false, the average age was 29.4: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/L...

Here are the ages of the senior scientists: Oppenheimer: 38 Teller: 34 Lawrence: 41 Rabi: 44 Szilard: 44 Ulam: 33 Bethe: 36 Fuchs: 31 von Neumann: 39

So the younger people would have had plenty of supervision.

[sberens]

These are not the only 6 engineers working for DOGE, just the youngest. They have supervision as well.

[roland35]

How do we have any freaking clue what is going on with doge

[UltraSane]

They are all breaking the law.

[nxobject]

By who, other than Elon Musk, in turn accountable to no one?

[mitthrowaway2]

That's incredibly young for senior scientists! 31 years old? Nobody over 45, let alone 50?

[CSSer]

I can’t speak to the second half of your comment, but it’s worth pointing out that 31 corresponds with a software engineer who received a BA/BS in four years after high school, started working and hit senior at 3-5 years (a lot of us). That gives a couple years of wiggle room to lead projects after that too.

[ideasarecool]

TBH the 31 year old was Fuchs who spied for the SU. So not really the best pick.

[dekhn]

many senior scientists are around 30-35 years old (by that time they have completed grad school and postdoc and are starting to get their first grants). And in nuclear physics most of these folks were young but had worked in key labs and their bosses were advisors on the project.

[52-6F-62]

And they all regretted their short sighted work didn’t they?

[butlike]

'senior' is only a 6 character prefix that can be attached to any name/position as an accolade. It means nothing out-of-context.

Oppenheimer was smart, no doubt, but did he have the life experience to warrant 'senior'-level decision making? I feel like the history books show it's emphatically indecisive.

[feoren]

> Oppenheimer was smart, no doubt, but did he have the life experience to warrant 'senior'-level decision making?

You're questioning whether the person chosen to be the director of weapons development could be called "senior" or not? What? Or are you hindsight-second-guessing the decision to make him director? It's wild to me that you would choose the director of one of the most important and ambitious (not to mention successful) programs in world history to make the point "senior is just a title".

[prvc]

Why did you choose to restrict your data to "senior" scientists? What is that supposed to prove?

[kamaal]

A lot of progress in many fields largely moves in the direction of inertia. Pretty much always.

That of course means drawing upon experience, work and ongoing contributions of people who are around for long. Obviously they would be old.

Getting old is a part of life no? Unless of course some one is planning on dying early.