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Comment by adenylyl | Hacker News Reader

"Anticipated Clearance Level: Q (Position will be cleared to this level)."

... why would someone working on climate modeling software need a clearance for nuclear weapon design information?

US citizenship required. And: 'If you hold multiple citizenships (U.S. and another country), you may be required to renounce your non-U.S. citizenship before a DOE L or Q clearance will be processed/granted.'

The lab clears basically all salaried employees at L or Q; if there's any chance that you might look at classified data some day (IE: if you want to interview at another group internally, or have some useful expertise that can be leveraged somewhere else), it saves everyone time and energy if you're already a Q. There's some financial reasons not to do it, but I think the math works out in favor of not running multiple levels of background check on every new hire (if they were to give you an L and then a Q).

I worked at LLNL 2001-2005 as a mechanical engineering. It was a very nice place to work. I had to go through the clearance process and that was the weirdest part. They sent people to interview a camp councelor I had when I was 10 years old! I also had to list every address I had lived at and every country I had ever visited with cooresponding dates.

Given the huge amount of personal data the government now has on me it was quite concerning when the OPM had 21.5 million government employees information hacked, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/07/0...

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