I'm an Ohio native that's recently moved back to the Columbus area myself. I know the area pretty intimately. Happy to respond to any questions about the area, as I'd love for there to be a larger tech scene around here.
A few things, some that are pretty general, and some that are pretty specific to my situation.
1. Family in general plays a large role.
2. I'm able to make stronger financial moves. Property is appreciating relatively quickly in the Columbus area, and purchase-cost-to-rent ratios are better here, from the investor PoV.
3. Full remote means that I'm still able to visit Seattle for the larger mountaineering trips, etc. that I like to take part in while being based out of a lower-CoL area. After several years, I was going to have to start taking flights to new destinations, anyway.
4. Opportunity to give back to the communities that gave me my start.
And some other factors come in, too. Covid definitely reduced my perceived benefit of living in Seattle. Nothing's forever though. It's a two-way door.
Two questions, does the area have symmetric gigabit fiber? If so, how reliable is it in your opinion? If not, what is the best option for multiple family members working from home?
How are water, electricity, sewage, road condition, utilities situation? Any reasons why a work from home worker might not want to live there?
I pay $70/mo for full duplex gig FTTH thru AT&T in Columbus. Super reliable but not available everywhere. You can get 1gb down/100mb up cable for similar price city wide.
No issues with utilities. Suburbs are better at handling snow removal/road maintenance than Columbus proper.
The internet infrastructure in Columbus isn't on par with a lot of the larger cities, and I think you'd have a hard time finding the speeds you're looking for, judging by what I've found - seems like there's some limited AT&T fiber, but it's not widespread. My service is reliable, though, and I haven't found bandwidth to be a problem as a full-remote employee.
Utilities are solid and seem much less suspect to outages compared to Seattle, a city I have a lot of experience living in. It's as though having more extreme weather more often ensures that the infrastructure is up to a certain rigor.
Roads are important here, and are well-maintained and addressed (e.g. expect trucks to be salting roads in anticipation for snow storms). Roads are also incredibly well-laid out in an inner/outer belt system that I miss when driving in other cities.