For those that don't know Minneapolis like the parent commenter and I do:
- Amazon already has an engineering office in Minneapolis. Check out some of the jobs here.
- Amazon has a fulfillment center in Shakopee, MN -- a third ring suburb ~30 miles away from Minneapolis.
- This is mostly anecdotal on my part, but it's pretty typical for top computer science students at the University of Minnesota to go to Amazon / Microsoft in Seattle. Silicon Valley doesn't seem to bother recruiting in Minnesota, but Seattle-based companies seem to have good luck recruiting out of Minnesota -- where the weather is even worse.
- Minneapolis has the headquarters of some of Amazon's biggest "old retail" competitors -- Target and Best Buy. A large Amazon presence in Minneapolis would go a long way to poaching the top 10% of talent at both companies.
- Minneapolis also has a small but promising tech community. BuzzFeed and a few other tech companies have an engineering office in Minneapolis.