Ironically, I'm in just such a field as well. But that also causes another bit of pressure, because it does mean that I could stop sooner and go back to science if I wanted to fund less people. Covering myself and a grad student can be done with a few bits and pieces of funding. As I noted in the back of napkin calculation, a staff scientist vastly increases the amount of money I need to find.
> Yeah, although I said in my OP that "I just want to do science", in reality I write parts of grants, mostly the technical parts, all the time, and I go to grant strategy meetings, where I feel my input is valued as I can often give a better idea of what's feasible than the PIs can. I guess more precisely, I don't want the responsibility and pressure of being in charge of the whole package, and I don't like dealing with all the paperwork. So in our case the funding is a team effort as well.
In fairness, I reacted to this because I have met some people who meant it seriously - they want to be left alone in a lab to answer their questions while someone else keeps the lights on. And well...yeah...you just described the perfect job.
> I have been with him since grad school. In the early days, the way we got around this was titling me as a postdoc and paying me like a staff scientist, which was fine by me.
And this hasn't backfired by having one of his "postdocs" not progressing very fast?