I had colleagues at IBM Research who, in the 1970s, spent months in Africa following elephants' migrations *as part of their research*. People maintaining numerical libraries, hardly ever seen in Yorktown. It must have been awesome working in research for a monopoly.

And I have a friend who joined NVDA about 20 years ago doing research, and is worth a bit more than $100M. Also awesome: working for a technology leader. N.B.: financial considerations didn't matter to him, as he stuck with his employer when nobody was paying attention.

I guess that the lesson is that, in love, in comedy, and in research, timing is everything.