I have a "We need X to explore domain Y" grant, and it's lovely. It's also pretty rare, but at the moment, most of my funding is from those types of mechanisms. That is, admittedly, somewhat unusual.
I will say that "the people evaluating the proposal didnt know shit about the field." isn't true in the U.S. For grants from the NIH, NSF, or CDC, they're almost all peer-reviewed. While some hot topics get a bit of needless shine to them, I've also seen grants ripped apart for "They just tacked LLMs onto this for no reason", etc.
I do definitely get not wanting that. There are people I know and respect immensely as scientists who went "I don't want to be a PI" and that's legit.
I will say, and this is not about your post, that Hacker News both often laments the paucity of staff scientist positions, and also likes to attack the PI who does nothing but write grants, but you can't actually have it both ways. Almost all of my grant writing is driven by keeping my people employed.
I will say that "the people evaluating the proposal didnt know shit about the field." isn't true in the U.S. For grants from the NIH, NSF, or CDC, they're almost all peer-reviewed. While some hot topics get a bit of needless shine to them, I've also seen grants ripped apart for "They just tacked LLMs onto this for no reason", etc.
I do definitely get not wanting that. There are people I know and respect immensely as scientists who went "I don't want to be a PI" and that's legit.
I will say, and this is not about your post, that Hacker News both often laments the paucity of staff scientist positions, and also likes to attack the PI who does nothing but write grants, but you can't actually have it both ways. Almost all of my grant writing is driven by keeping my people employed.