The Layoff of Dr. Tim Parker: An Open Letter to JPL

I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Parker speak at my astronomy club and was greatly dismayed at how brutally and abruptly he was laid off at your prestigious institution. I worked at JPL as a temporary secretary while working on my software engineering degree in the early 1980s and loved it there.

I just don’t understand how a company could come in and lock a person of such stature and education out of his work of many years there within an hour of being laid off. Now he has to hope he will be able to access some of the many hours and years of research that he did for the success of JPL and the Mars research because he didn’t expect to be so disrespectfully let go; he had followed protocol of not making copies of everything for his own records. Most likely he signed something that said he wasn’t supposed to, and he had the integrity not to do it.

I do hope you will reconsider your practices of showing little appreciation for the amazing work people do at JPL when the budget becomes more important than the quality of the employees and the work they do because they love what they are doing is considered.

Thank you for listening.

Sincerely,

BAS