I don't want to compare RIM employees to Nortel employees, but...I was in Ottawa through most of Nortel's disaster, and "glut of highly-competent engineers" it was not.
Surely employees play a significant role in how insanely horrible RIM products are compared to the competition.
Given that RIM has recruited heavily from U of Waterloo, U of T, and the like, I would hope they have some top-notch technical talent, there. RIM's failures seem to be driven by upper management more than the rank-and-file. Even if the engineers were mostly incompetent (unlikely), there would still be some world-class talent there ready for poaching. Now, whether a startup could compete for that talent against the likes of a pre-IPO facebook is another matter.
As a UW grad, I can tell you that most of the best talent from those universities does not go to RIM, and hasn't for a number of years. Sure they have a few really excellent people, the few who want to sacrifice better opportunities to stay local and don't find Google (who have a Waterloo office) appealing, but the majority of the people in my graduating class who went there aren't engineers I'd want to work with. And very few of the people they hire would make it through the hiring process of top companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.
I would expect the highly driven, world-class talent to have moved on swiftly after completing their grad program, if RIM's failures go all the way up.
You can be a technically brilliant engineer, but if you have a horrible sense of business/intuition, it's still possible to 'maroon' yourself at a stagnating company. There's a lot to be said for the "safe" option.
Surely employees play a significant role in how insanely horrible RIM products are compared to the competition.