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I wanna be this guy when I grow up.

Seriously, how realistic is it to get a job like this guy's? Open ended, no rules, just solving problems... Most days I'm fine with a boring specialized engineering career, but this one got to me...

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Before he was a researcher for IBM, he was a "groundbreaking physicist", for which the article provides this as the evidence: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1998/03/rotating-single-oxy...

So, be one of the best in the field, and perhaps folks will trust you to do wild open-ended research forever. I think that sounds like a pretty reasonable deal.

Any career in fundamental research is more or less like that. From what I've seen personally, academics and government labs are the two biggest places you can find the most open ended roles. Each comes with their own caveats, of course.

interesting to know. in my limited experience though, in practice, in academia the politics is so heavy (more than in your average workplace) that political matters often overshadow research matters. maybe that is one of the caveats you had in mind. i am curious about government labs though. though it seems country-dependent. how is it different from academia?

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