[vonmoltke]

I saw this attitude quite a bit at the large defense contractor I used to work for. As in your case, I'm in an area without much of a small-company tech culture[1]. Additionally, this area saw a big telecom surge during the dot-com bubble. A number of people left for telecoms large and small during that period, then got burned on the bubble pop and came back humbled. This reinforces the culture of staying put and dealing with whatever crap the company descides to put them through.

Defense contractors are a bit of an oddity, though. Its a quasi-government job, overall the most stable private sector employment, and has excellent benefits. Someone starting at my former employer out of undergrad today does have a reasonable chance of retiring from there. It seems like the workforce is slowly distilling down to those for whom such old-style employment is highly desirable.

[1] Its slowly changing, but it seems to be mostly B2B services, marketing and advertising shops.