I advise my grad students who are looking toward an academic career to have a Plan B. Part of that process is to think about the kinds of companies and kind of work you would be interested in doing.
I just found a list of companies I would have loved to work for seven years ago, had I decided not to go the academic route, I probably would have been knocking doors here:
Origin (Atos Origin)
General Magic
Anderson Consulting (Accenture)
Crystal Dynamics (Eidos Interactive)
Sony
Kaua’i Institute for Communications Media
Gartner
Microsoft
The Dalton School
Reuters New Media
Funny; most of these actually survived in some form, and I would still love to work for any of them. (well, I guess with the notable exception…)
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