Ive been working in engineering for a few years now. Ive gotten pretty good at my job, and Ive learned a lot. But it was never really my intention to work at a big corporation my whole life.

When I was a kid, on TV there were all these scientists and researchers who just had money to do research somehow. They didnt go to an office or go to meetings, they just had funding somehow to go do science stuff. There was often a big lab built right into their home so they could just wake up and tinker around with stuff. That was the dream for me growing up.

I could always just keep working where I am now, but I cant really do the kind of research I want within the normal structured environment that big companies want me to work in. I want to work on a difficult problem that I would expect to take years of experimentation before I would even hope of making any big breakthroughs.

Im wondering if anyone here has ever done any kind of work as an independent researcher. Like, living off grant money or something like that. Ive been looking at SBIR/STTR grants as a possible first step, but that would only get me 3 years, and after that Id need to find a continued income source.