It's also strangely in that sweet spot of big city that you have to drive everywhere in. It's in the top couple good case studies of mid-20th century American urban planning.

I mean, that light rail system is just, man. It's no wonder the Twin Cities are (one of) the most bike friendly cities in the country -- if you're not driving somewhere it's the only other way to reliably get where you're going in reasonable time :)

The driving everywhere thing is what I can't stand about Minneapolis. Most of the tech jobs are in the burbs, which means driving. I try to mitigate the driving by living uptown walking distance to bars/grocery store... however with what I am paying for rent I may as well move to one of the bigger tech hubs.

The only way to reap all of the benefits of Minneapolis is to work/live downtown. However, most of the tech jobs are in the burbs so it's a problem! Furthermore, downtown minneapolis is pretty lame. All the cool events/restaurants and bars are not found downtown.

Our light rail and commuter rail system is a joke. I mean, they are nice to have but decades of NIMBYism and political interference delayed and morphed them into systems that work but are shadows of what they could have been.

IMO the one thing that saves our mass transit is that busses are allowed to ride on the shoulder bypassing most traffic. I lived in the north burbs and had a job downtown Minneapolis. I could take an express bus from a nice ramp facility to right into downtown with just one extra stop. 20 minute trip vs nearly an hour in a car.

However, forget about using mass transit if you're trying to get anywhere outside of downtown Minneapolis.

Also, the cities are bike friendly but not as friendly as most 'best places to bike' actually say they are. Most articles go by sum of miles of bike lanes, but many bike lanes here are pretty terrible. Not protected, poorly maintained, not plowed or light enforcement for cars badly parked. I'd say Minneapolis is as bike friendly as any other ubran area with a sizable health conscious population.

Except, ya know, during the 6 months of winter :)

It's even more reliable then, compared to public transit. I think we have one of the largest winter commuting populations in the country. The down side is the trails get plowed last, after the roads and highways.

I walk my two mile commute through the winter, instead of biking. With boots and wool, it's rather pleasant.

How does one go about finding tech jobs in the MSP area?

I have always been really interested, but never found any actual companies and jobs that I felt would represent a good career move.

Minneapolis/St. Paul are not huge cities and having the benefit of growing up here I find that my professional network pretty much covers the greater metro area. It seems like everyone knows each other or is only a connection or two away.

With that being said, the best way is to pull on a professional network (natch) and the best way to build that network is to attend some of the tech focused meetups in either city. Ruby.mn is pretty popular if you're into Ruby (or just wanting to meet devs in general).

Otherwise the safest route is to join up with one of the large firms and build a network from there to branch out into more smaller gigs if thats your thing.

Not that I have any real comparison but I feel like our tech scene is pretty weak. While there are jobs, and companies, they are mostly monolithic fortune 500 dinosaurs. Who in tech wants to work for General Mills?

Some of the mega corps do have some really cool work going on. It's not all rank-and-file development, I'm not even talking about R&D. The cities are fairly small compared to other larger midwest cities and if you have a decent reputation as someone who can deliver code or pick up good work there is plenty of opportunity to shine very brightly at a large org and have your pick of projects to tackle.

Fortune 500 aside, there are a lot of smaller startups in the cities. They mostly focus on creating products aimed at the health insurance industry though, which in my experience is fairly dull work.

I agree and disagree. On the one hand, General Mills, Wells Fargo, and Target are never going to be as cutting-edge as Google. On the other hand, most jobs at Google aren't cutting-edge, either. The two guys I know at Google are doing stuff that's not that much different than your average line-of-business programmer.

I'd say availability of tech jobs in the "sort of interesting" category is great in MSP, but the truly amazing jobs are still rare.