> You really can do whatever you want, you'll just be limited by money than by other people :) I think that your idea is the practical one and you'll get a lot

> You really can do whatever you want, you'll just be limited by money than by other people :) I think that your idea is the practical one and you'll get a lot of mileage out of it, but may I add one more limiting constraint, one I've had to learn to respect from experience? That constraint is mental energy. Your job in tech has constraints that mean if you're doing it right and are working in a role that's pushing you to your full potential, you won't have enough mental energy at the end of the day to work on your side projects. While that might be disappointing, it's often a lot better than the alternative: if you select for a cushy job which has great WLB, you may experience a level of disillusionment from stasis that can also make it hard to want to work on things outside of work. I wish I had an easy answer to this stuff but I don't. Long-term, if you have a stable career in tech, it makes it a lot easier to take time off for sabbaticals or periods of startup work (yours or others) because you can return to a well-compensated career that's pleasant and will give you enormous surplus lifetime earnings -- a perfect match for scientific work on the side, as you put it! But it's still a career. To get growth you'll be happy with, it will take the lion's share of your mental energy and strategic planning, over a long period of time. Good fortune aside, there's often no way around that.