Well, I work for a Fortune 150 company in not cramped offices in a not dense, not expensive city that is definitely not in the middle of nowhere. Its a great working environment in a great location with great benefits and pay. Such things do exist, you just have to get out of the bubble and look for them.
I suspect everyones definition of middle of nowhere is a bit different. For example, to a NYer or Bostonian anything outside their respective cores is "nowhere". To people further south and west it seems to be a much more expansive definition.
For me it's more of a suburbia vs inner city thing. I want to live where I'm a few minutes walk from a grocery store, a few bars and other amenities along with easy public access (walking, riding, public transport) to work. I could live in a large rural town if they catered to this but few seem to.
The other big thing is the lack of job opportunities in smaller cities, solvable via working remotely but still relatively uncommon, particularly for new hires.
For Boston some have this attitude about anything outside of Route 128. However historically that’s where almost all the tech jobs were. Today more has moved into the city but a large number of tech jobs—especially large companies—are well outside Boston/Cambridge.
