[uncletaco]

I work for a national lab and in my experience it will take a lot for someone to give up a place like the Eastbay for East Tennessee. If the national lab were near Nashville that might be different. Los Alamos has to give software developers a sizeable bonus each year just to keep them from flying to greener pasteurs in a less remote location. I know I left partly because my wife had such a hard time finding work and the remoteness made the area too expensive for what we were getting out of it socially and careerwise.

[pnpnp]

I've thought about this a lot, so thanks for getting the neurons firing again. In my case, I worked for some agencies and had an absolute blast. In this phase of my life, I'm living somewhere else & would fight tooth and nail to stay here.

I wonder if it would be worth it from a talent perspective to create more, larger, and strategically placed SCIFs (Sensitive compartmented information facility) around the country so that there was less of a physical requirement for information workers to commute every day.

Some of the jobs I worked were a blast with really great and interesting people. I do miss it, but would never move back to the physical locations required.

[robwwilliams]

ORNL region is gorgeous and there are plenty of jobs and relatively inexpensive housing.

[petsfed]

Its gorgeous for some. My own experiences in the Ozarks made it a non-starter for me. Its hard to calculate the exact impact it had on me, but I do wonder if I would've worked harder in grad school if I wasn't actively dreading actually getting the most prestigious research positions in my field (I was studying material science of optical and electronic materials at the time).

Granted, a lot of academia is repeating "just keep going, the end is in sight" until you die, but it is frustrating that it has to be that way.