> My team at Google has a pretty broad mandate which gives us a fair bit of freedom.
The other points might be fair but this would have to be the exception rather than the rule in private industry and even Google I would image would never give enough leeway to someone to "monitor volcanoes with sensor networks"
The sensor networks research was work I did at Harvard prior to joining Google. I don't think Google is very interested in my deploying sensor networks on volcanoes, although (to be fair) I have not asked.
The other points might be fair but this would have to be the exception rather than the rule in private industry and even Google I would image would never give enough leeway to someone to "monitor volcanoes with sensor networks"