On Apr 17, 1:57 pm, PD wrote:

You could be a perpetual post-doc. Some folks do that.
No teaching responsibilities except cleaning up graduate student
disasters.

This, however, is not really a golden path to excellence.
More like an aluminum path to passable competence.

Yeah. works pretty well if you are a mildly competent researcher. The
only problem is that if you are brilliant, credit for all your
wondrous insight and and discoveries will be grabbed by the full
professor you are working for. Of course, you do get the satisfaction
of knowing your hard work made the life of a fellow human being
better...