I'd say the best place to work is for yourself - you're going to have complete control and will be able to focus on your craft on your terms. At the same time, it's hard to grow in a vacuum - I'd suggest finding a mature Open Source project to participate in. And to blend that into a career, try finding a company that provides commercial support for an Open Source product. No matter where you go you're going to find personalities that don't mesh with you, and software processes trapped by legacy considerations and past design decisions. Which is to say - there's always room for improvement. That's not an answer that provides you directly with contacts/companies to profile, but I hope you find it useful anyway. -Rob On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 11:28 PM, Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> wrote: > What are the best places in the Twin Cities for working as a software > developer? > > The things I'm looking for: > 1. The team has all of the basic elements of a good software development > team, such as version control, bug tracking, a 1-step build process, etc. > Although I could be a hero by introducing a team to version control, bug > tracking, the 1-step build process, etc., that would take time away from > advancing the project, and a team lacking even the first few items in the > Joel Test would surely have many, many issues. I'd rather be average or > below average on a superior team than the hero of a lousy team. > 2. Software development is a very core part of what the company does. (I > guess this means that software companies should be my top priorities in my > job search while banks, insurance companies, etc. should probably be lesser > priorities.) > 3. The company treats the software developers well and doesn't shortchange > them on the resources they need. > 4. The team has good software developers and no bad ones (the ones who > can't code their way out of a paper bag despite having a CS degree and/or > "years of experience"). > 5. The team offers the option of using Linux instead of forcing Windows: > Using Windows means sacrificing control, as nobody outside Microsoft knows > everything about Windows. I do NOT want to have something go wrong and have > to consider the possibility that Windows rot on my machine plays a role. > > -- > Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> > Founder and lead developer of Swift Linux (http://www.swiftlinux.org) > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20110730/88ef1908/attachment.html>