When I was a lot younger, I worked at an older high technology company in SLC and I mostly loved it. My co-workers were mostly great, the company was the best

When I was a lot younger, I worked at an older high technology company in SLC and I mostly loved it. My co-workers were mostly great, the company was the best in its field (though was about to die, I'll get to that), I love the SLC area and Utah in general. I still have friends, mormon and not, from my time there. My direct management was kind, giving, open and knowledgeable and probably the best I have had in my career. However... the company had a really bad nepotism problem that resulted in protection and favoritism for mormons, and it was a cancer. I worked for the core part of the company, but they had multiple business units. There was an entire business unit that was falling apart because it was absolutely infested with incompetent LDS nepotism hires mostly in the management chain. It had apparently been a problem on and off for a decade+ but had recently started going really wrong when certain people had gotten into positions of authority. Within a few years, the company was effectively dead and had given up a bunch of its lines of business. All of the really good people I knew personally fled and went on to really amazing careers - and a lot left SLC due to the experience. Now.. the company might have died anyway. There were a lot of transitions at the time that took out the early high flyers. Certainly there were clouds on the horizon. But the immediate cause of death seems pretty clear. This was in the 90s, SLC was nice then as a place to live but is even nicer now - bike lanes downtown, etc. The air quality in the valley leaves a lot to be desired, the state government could easily clean that up if they wanted, and that's a problem. What stops me from moving back is the risk of social isolation for non-mormons and the nepotism. SLC proper is just under 50%, now, I think, but Utah county is 86% and the state as a whole 68%. It's a concern for them - they worry, "what if I get sick and need hospital care?" and wonder if they'll get the same level of treatment, they wonder if they'll ever be a tier-1 friend with half the population, etc.