This seems pretty cool. But I'm not clear how someone can be a (full-time) professor at MIT and also be a (full-time) vice president at TRI. I've seen this kind of two-job situation before but never understood how it's practical, unless the person works 70+ hours a week.
You probably still 40 hours week or less, but you're so expert in those fields that your 10 hours of work cannot be replaced by somebody else working full time.
In software engineering terms, you would gladly pay a full good salary and give a good role to John Carmack to work on your projects 6/7 days per month anyway, because he's John Carmack.
I guess but that feels more applicable to an individual contributor role, albeit a very senior one. VPs I've known in my 30+ years in software are fully booked all day every day. A professor maybe gets to count his outside work as part of his research efforts but what about say class load, mentoring grad students, serving on committees, and the like?
I can't but point the reality of modern college education: professors nowadays are mostly fundraisers than teachers or lab directors.
This is especially true in the United States or Switzerland from my experience but it applies to virtually any country where the budget that goes in public research is not really enough.
Their first job is really fundraising, and their second job is actually academical.
I've worked for some time with scientists like Michael Graetzel[1], he was very important in the lab, don't get me wrong, he had a brilliant mind and he would still take decisions and give terrific feedback when he was in the labs, but the primary role was fundraising.
You can only have the best lab if you have the most money and can hire more and the best people, that's more important than teaching or directing a lab, sadly.
