> But is it your project? Or is it your employers, and do they actually own it? If you’re fired, do you still get to work on that project? Varies. I optimize

> But is it your project? Or is it your employers, and do they actually own it? If you’re fired, do you still get to work on that project? Varies. I optimize my employment situation for my personal ROI. But it turns out that making money off of even excellent scientific work is often very hard and involves insane amounts of slog. Like 1 hour of science to 10 hours of not-science. So usually employment and assignment has better risk-adjusted return. Not always, but usually. > So my question is: who is doing such independent work? Who are these researchers and how are they disseminating their work? If there aren’t very many of these people, can we not conclude this mode of research is not a viable alternative to mainstream research? I know there are several people like this in my field. They publish a paper every year or three, often in smaller venues. Or just throw things on arxiv. > So I wonder how viable this path is? Do people just not consider it? Or do they lose interest in research over those two decades? Does life get in the way? I think the middle and latter options happen quite a lot. I meet a lot of early retirees on Tuesday mid-morning lifts. I think a lot of people lose their passion for research in their 30s. This happens in the academy as well. Sometimes after amassing wealth you realize "hey, you know what I enjoy more than doing world-class mathematics? Chilling in my cabin with my family and skiing." > And so you’re saying they funded their own research with their wealth at that point? They took the PoP positions to pay for their kids' college without spending down savings. A sort of middle ground between working and retirement, and also a good way to build some collaboration opportunities. > I thought we were talking about funding a research agenda. From where I’m sitting, that costs millions. To be clear, the premise that started this thread is the "a guy and his laptop/occasional cloud spend" style of research that's prevalent in CS and Math. Yeah, if you need $1M/yr then you need an income stream or a different level of wealth. > I guess my overall point is that, most people who want to do research, just do it. Spending decades amassing resources just to get started seems backwards. I think this is reasonable advice for people who (1) need something more than a laptop and modest cloud compute, and (2) are absolutely sure that they would rather pursue that particular research as opposed to retiring early, and (3) are certain they they will be able to retain funding streams for the duration of their career.