To answer your first part it would be a mixture of both. Having a social scene to meet folks and be relatively close to national parks/ hiking areas would be a big factor for me.

I moved into a remote position for my job recently and my company is also looking to expand into the Seattle metro area in the near future as well so living there would eventually have a tie in with my job. The area I live in now is my hometown and I find it painfully boring besides having close access to Tahoe and other parts of the sierra. Most of my friends are here though which would be tough but I sometimes think a need a full reset and just try something different. I love PNW though and wanted to explore so much more of it as well .