[stbn]

Thanks for the suggestion! That would be something in the context of either education or administration, right? Ironically, I always had the idea that people end up in the university system if they're »not good enough to work in the real world«.

[itronitron]

You'll probably want to look for research engineering related positions, a lot of universities have associated research laboratories that do R&D work for various organizations. Regarding the quality of people, I have one friend who just went from a university position to Google and another that went to Apple.