As someone that's done remote work for a long time, I wouldn't live east of the Cascades because it's so far from any good airport. (Also because my family and I are big travelers). Post-2020 we don't visit the office much but once your company wants you to come into the office every quarter that 3 hour drive each way from Bend is going to be hell—or dealing with that postage stamp of an airport in Redmond.

Even if your office is close enough for a regional airport you might change jobs.

Of course Eugene basically has the same problem.

I haven't had to do any business travel since the pandemic started, but I agree that proximity to a good airport can be an important consideration. There are probably a number of other reasons keeping me in the Denver area, but the ability to walk out my front door, take a train to an airport where I can travel anywhere in the country quickly and cheaply... it's a killer feature.

Some friends recently moved to Asheville, NC, which seems to be an attractive destination these days. But it's hard for them to find affordable flights, and they end up with out of the way connections that make travel onerous. Once when I was visiting Deadwood, SD, I talked to a guy who recently moved there from Denver and travels for work. But his company doesn't want to pay the high prices to fly out of Rapid City, so he found himself driving six hours back to Denver to catch flights!

If I was considering a move to a smaller metro or a rural area, I'd need to think hard about how well I could push back against my customer's requests for travel.

I don't travel much for work and am not a big traveller.

This isn't really a big problem, and RDM does have daily flights to most major west coast destinations.