[jacobobryant]

I read parts of this over the weekend after finding it via "We need a career path for invention"[1], another good article. Both of them focus on the idea that there's an unfilled space right now between research and entrepreneurship. From the latter:

> The bottom line is that if a young person wants to focus their career on invention—as distinct from scientific research, corporate engineering, or entrepreneurship—the support structure doesn’t exist. There isn’t a straightforward way to get started, there isn’t an institution of any kind that will hire you into this role, and there isn’t a community that values what you are focused on and will reward you with prestige and further opportunities based on your success. In short, there is no career path.

This resonated with me; long story short, that describes pretty well how I feel about my career so far. That being said, for software developers I think the situation isn't so bad. PARPA addresses the harder problem of invention in the "world of atoms" -- but in software it's feasible to do freelancing/consulting and then have flexibility to spend time on open source. I might be switching to that soon, after having spent the past few years on entrepreneurship. I wish I had thought seriously of freelancing + open-source as a career path while I was in college (or even better, before college; it could've saved me a lot of time on homework!).

[1] https://rootsofprogress.org/a-career-path-for-invention

[TeMPOraL]

This makes me think of something that's been sitting in my quotes file for years:

"What one wants is to be able to talk with a diverse club of smart people, arrange to do short one- off research projects and simulations, publish papers or capture intellectual property quickly and easily, and move on to another conversation. Quickly. Easily. For a living. Can’t do that in industry. Can’t do that in the Academy. Yet in my experience, scientists and engineers all want it. Maybe even a few mathematicians and social scientists do, too."

  -- Bill Tozier, Diverse themes observed at GECCO 2006[0]

I'd like this too. So far, I haven't found it. Both your link and TFA seem to be talking about something like that, so I'm hopeful.

--

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20120711014452/http://williamtoz...

[whatshisface]

It's impossible to have a system where inventors can capture intellectual property "quickly and easily," because after about a year there will be so much captured intellectual property floating around that every engineer has to become a patent lawyer and licensing negotiator to keep their own addition to the pile from infringing.

[yetihehe]

> that describes pretty well how I feel about my career so far.

Yeah, I have invention that I feel would change energy generation world, but had to wait about 10 years already, because I can't spend enough time to build prototype because I have to earn some money first. Starting a company from your garage is a good idea, but I had to get a garage first.

Just FYI - I'm not whining, I just show obstacles for inventors. For me - I will succeed, it will just take more time.