I’m working with one other person (Nuño Sempere), though we’re on different continents, and our work requires fairly little interaction. This is on behalf of QURI. I’ve been considering expanding, but have been hesitant so far.
Some thoughts:
Working with 1-4 others for 3+ years often requires you to work on fairly specialized problems, which means that the job market is limited. It’s difficult to find people who really want to make the investment necessary to gamble their careers on such issues.
Often having a loose network of collaborators is better than narrow teams, in Academia. This supports a bunch of different arrangements.
I agree with Dustin about many of the best, most innovative people, being fairly disagreeable.
There’s little pressure to really join up sometimes. If people are interested in different topics, it’s not clear which clusters should represent long-term research efforts, and exactly what these clusters should be for a long period of time. Many researchers are interested in weird collections of things.
Living directly with your boss/manager is kind of weird. Done a bit in silicon valley, but I have mixed feelings here.
I’m working with one other person (Nuño Sempere), though we’re on different continents, and our work requires fairly little interaction. This is on behalf of QURI. I’ve been considering expanding, but have been hesitant so far.
Some thoughts:
Working with 1-4 others for 3+ years often requires you to work on fairly specialized problems, which means that the job market is limited. It’s difficult to find people who really want to make the investment necessary to gamble their careers on such issues.
Often having a loose network of collaborators is better than narrow teams, in Academia. This supports a bunch of different arrangements.
I agree with Dustin about many of the best, most innovative people, being fairly disagreeable.
There’s little pressure to really join up sometimes. If people are interested in different topics, it’s not clear which clusters should represent long-term research efforts, and exactly what these clusters should be for a long period of time. Many researchers are interested in weird collections of things.
Living directly with your boss/manager is kind of weird. Done a bit in silicon valley, but I have mixed feelings here.
A few things would need to happen for there to be a good group of 2-5 over time:
There needs to be a clear goal or specific area
There needs to be several people who are very excited about working primarily on that goal for a long period of time
These people need to be very strong (to get funding)
These people must enjoy working with other people
These people must enjoy and be helped by working with each other
There probably should be at least one person who is willing to do managerial/operational duties, and is a good fit for it