[mplspm]: What's the tech sector like in Minnesota?

[Dave Rolsky]

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, Ian Malpass wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> My wife and I will be moving back to Minnesota in a few months' time.
> (Well, she'll be moving back - it'll be my first time living and working
> in the US.)
>
> This, of course, brings me to the point: what's the tech sector like in
> Minnesota at the moment? Are things picking up? Are there jobs available?
> I do perl, and webbish stuff like HTML/CSS and JavaScript, and XMLish
> stuff like RDF and RSS. I've got a degree and a masters (chemistry, which
> isn't the *most* relevant, to be sure). Plus I can talk nicely to
> befuddled users (although that might be a problem in the US, given that my
> accent might cause even more confusion).
>
> Any ideas? Pointers? Good employers? Bad employers?

Did anyone respond to this?

Anyway, the tech sector probably isn't any worse than elsewhere.

However, there's not a lot of Perl/Unix stuff, especially as a percentage
of available tech work.  Many of the local employers are insurance
companies, banks, etc. which seem to be MS shops.  There are certainly
places that do use Perl, but we don't see a lot of Perl jobs postings come
through this list.  You could check out jobs.perl.org and see if you can
find any Minnesota listings.

I work as a consultant and most of my current (and past) clients have been
out-of-town.

One employer I know that uses Perl is the local Reuters branch which used
to be Bridge, before Reuters bought them.  They use Perl for processing
lots of financial data feeds.  I interviewed there and they seemed nice,
but they have a draconian IP contract that claims ownership of _any_
creative work you do at _any_ time while employed there, so I couldn't
even consider working there.

One employer that at one time used Perl, and still may, but which I
wouldn't recommend is Digital River.  I have no idea if they still use
Perl, or are still run by a bunch of nitwits, as I left a couple years
back, so take this with appropriate amounts of salt.


-dave

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