Technology/Software Industry Job Market? (Minneapolis, Eagan: contractors, salaries, moving to)

[lilpixxie]

I'm moving to the Twin Cities area in the next couple of months. I'm wondering how strong the job market is for the IT/technology/software industry. I'm a technical writer, and it looks like there are a fair number of jobs in my field on monster.com and dice.com in the Twin Cities area. Does anyone have any knowledge of this industry or personal experience finding jobs in this field? Any information is appreciated. Thanks!

[BillyB]

We do have a computer or two here

[denver_hacker]

I'm in IT too, a software developer, and looking to relocate to the Twin Cities as well. From what I can tell, most of the IT jobs are in downtown Minneapolis, downtown Saint Paul, and the south/southwest 'burbs (Eagan, Bloomingtom, Eden Prarie, etc). Medtronix does have a decent presence in the northern 'burbs.

I asked a similar question on this board a while back and didn't get much response. Hopefully this will trigger more responses!

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by denver_hacker

I'm in IT too, a software developer, and looking to relocate to the Twin Cities as well. From what I can tell, most of the IT jobs are in downtown Minneapolis, downtown Saint Paul, and the south/southwest 'burbs (Eagan, Bloomingtom, Eden Prarie, etc). Medtronix does have a decent presence in the northern 'burbs.

I asked a similar question on this board a while back and didn't get much response. Hopefully this will trigger more responses!

The market for full-time software developers was very weak several years ago (companies seemed far more interested in short-term contractors than FTEs), which is why many of the folks I know either moved or got out of the business entirely. But there's certainly a strong core up there.

The problem is finding places which actually have funded openings.

[moving123456]

Java programmers were in fairly high demand when I was looking for a job a few months back, many at over 6 figure salaries. .NET programmers seemed to be in demand also, slightly below Java in pay though.

[Haver]

I havn't been actively looking for four years now (got a nice permanent Oracle job) but I can tell you from the other end, interviewing peope to fill someone's slot who is on a leave of absence, what it's like. We've been seeing a lot of people claiming experience they only have from a book or from shoulder-surfing a coworker, and a lot of continental Indians who just can't make themselves understood. We're also seeing contracting firms putting out seven page resumes for people with light to moderate skills, trying to hit every buzzword or technology in the list, and telling their clients to spout back at us everything in their resume that matches our requirements in the interview (we had one poor guy go on for five minutes reciting his resume at us. We thanked him and closed the interview). We may just go on and leave the position unfilled.

I would kill for a guy with a 3 page resume who can speak clearly and say "I don't know" when they don't know...and give solid details when pressed about something they do know something about instead of parroting back what is on their resume.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by moving123456

Java programmers were in fairly high demand when I was looking for a job a few months back, many at over 6 figure salaries. .NET programmers seemed to be in demand also, slightly below Java in pay though.

Yeah, we have a lot of folks here trying to shoehorn Java into everything they can. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but using Java and Oracle for real-time messaging still makes me scratch my head. I guess it doesn't matter than it's literally 10 times slower than what it's replacing, tho, if it's still fast enough to keep the customer happy. But it takes 250-300 milliseconds to do what the mainframe app it's replacing can do in 30.

That said, I like Java as a language. A lot cleaner than C++, or at least the bits of C++ code I've inherited here (ugh). There are times, though, when I'm glad I can retreat into the older F77 code we have lying around on the mainframe side and wash my poor little brain out.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by Haver

I havn't been actively looking for four years now (got a nice permanent Oracle job) but I can tell you from the other end, interviewing peope to fill someone's slot who is on a leave of absence, what it's like. We've been seeing a lot of people claiming experience they only have from a book or from shoulder-surfing a coworker, and a lot of continental Indians who just can't make themselves understood. We're also seeing contracting firms putting out seven page resumes for people with light to moderate skills, trying to hit every buzzword or technology in the list, and telling their clients to spout back at us everything in their resume that matches our requirements in the interview (we had one poor guy go on for five minutes reciting his resume at us. We thanked him and closed the interview). We may just go on and leave the position unfilled.

Are you looking for a reasonable mix of skills? I've seen some job listings that were real doozies...

I would kill for a guy with a 3 page resume who can speak clearly and say "I don't know" when they don't know...and give solid details when pressed about something they do know something about instead of parroting back what is on their resume.

If you haven't used something in the heat of battle, you haven't really used it. That doesn't mean you can't be productive with it, by any means, but there's a difference between being able to write a few little proggies and having to deal with a failing production app at 4am that you didn't write and that has no docs except the source code.

My previous job had VERY good programmer documentation. This one, not so much...

[golfgal]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

Yeah, we have a lot of folks here trying to shoehorn Java into everything they can. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but using Java and Oracle for real-time messaging still makes me scratch my head. I guess it doesn't matter than it's literally 10 times slower than what it's replacing, tho, if it's still fast enough to keep the customer happy. But it takes 250-300 milliseconds to do what the mainframe app it's replacing can do in 30.

That said, I like Java as a language. A lot cleaner than C++, or at least the bits of C++ code I've inherited here (ugh). There are times, though, when I'm glad I can retreat into the older F77 code we have lying around on the mainframe side and wash my poor little brain out.

I think there is something in the terms of service here about talking only in English .

[Haver]

We're looking for Oracle Enterprise E-Business Suite on an 11i 11.5.10 platform - forms, reports, pl/sql applications dev & maint for the "needs" list, with workflow, portal & xml publisher on the "want" list, ideally someone with portal configuration expertise since we're migrating portal to a new standard.