[weberc2]

I left Cedar Falls precisely because I became the subject matter expert within a couple years of graduating--there simply weren't many people to learn from. There were people around me who were experienced in lots of other related areas which were rapidly declining in importance and frankly didn't excite me. Besides, it was really hard to find people who were as interested in learning as I was--I was mostly viewed with suspicion because I didn't put in the bare minimum and go home, and I quickly realized that wasn't the sort of team I wanted to work on. Further, there weren't any companies in the area that were doing exciting things, probably due to a dearth of talent in the area (not to knock on rural folks; assuming the distribution of talent is the same in rural areas as urban areas, the hiring pool is much larger in an area where people are more densely populated, and this is ignoring multipliers like the draw of talent to large cities and the improved rate of learning when your talent pool has improved access to other smart people).

I guess this is to say how you view this depends on whether you interested in being a local subject matter expert or a global subject matter expert.