[pnathan]

I've worked in a remote-ish location in the middle of farms. Part of my work there involved some recruiting for my team. Let me tell you, moving to a place where the only career opportunity was the company talking to the candidate was basically a deal breaker. I left them because, broadly, it would have broken my career too.

" the good employees would quit because they wouldn't want to compromise their salary, marketability, and ability to take a new job, "

The good candidates wouldn't touch us with a 10ft pole, the ambitious graduates were getting out of the farmland and over to the cities. So we generally had a great intern pool (lots of sharp people in financially strapped situations not wanting to move) and second to third rate hires. Not bad hires, but... not close to best in class. So while I can perfectly understand bootstrapping or running a (very) small business in the boondocks (many many reasons to do so), I can not advise locating an office there. Nor can I advise any enterprising and ambitious student to move to the boondocks for a job. Networking matters.