Pivoting into tech seemed thrilling in 2018. Here's what has taken its place

Kendra Sinclair has a lot to savor from her 13-year career at Meta’s Facebook unit, where she was part of a thriving social-impact team that worked with nonprofit organizations around the world. 

But when that role vanished last November — as part of a massive company layoff — it didn’t take long for her to find an exciting new path.

Today Sinclair owns and runs a charmingly renovated motel about two hours north of New York City. She and her husband have packed the property with hand-restored vintage furniture — plus all kinds of 1970s memorabilia. (Fleetwood Mac albums, anyone?) 

“There’s nothing like sanding down an old wooden side table and refinishing it until it looks beautiful,” Sinclair says. Business at her Reclaimed Motel in Red Hook, N.Y., is right on track with projections. During rare breaks, she can savor a flurry of five-star raves on TripAdvisor. 

As unexpected cutbacks sweep through the tech sector, many thousands of software engineers, digital marketers and product managers are discovering that tech is no longer the only game in town. 

A new analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team highlights a wide range of industries where tech’s career pull is fading. Across the board, employees in these industries are less likely to be leaving for tech jobs. And in two fields, finance and administrative services, the influx of tech refugees has perked up.

As the chart above shows, tech’s reduced allure is most pronounced when looking at movement between tech and consumer services, which includes everything from civic and philanthropic work to repair and maintenance providers. 

Overall, tech’s appeal as a career destination, vis a vis consumer services, declined 40.1% in 2022’s fourth quarter, as compared with 2021’s fourth quarter.

Other fields where there’s been a substantial dimming in tech’s appeal as a career destination include administrative and support services (-39.4%), government administration (-35.2%), manufacturing (-31.1%) and retail (-30.8%).

It’s important to note that interest in tech careers isn’t collapsing. In many cases, the inflow of talent into tech still remains numerically greater than the outflow. But Economic Graph data shows that the stampede into tech from many other lines of work — as chronicled in this 2018 Reddit thread — is slowing considerably.

Whether this retreat from tech-company careers is a lasting change or just a brief stumble remains to be seen. In the past five to 10 years, waves of people with highly adaptable skills — such as tax specialists, building services specialists and more — have stormed into tech because that’s where the greatest opportunities resided.

Now, tech-sector veterans such as Andrew Speer are taking a moment to size up today’s opportunity map. Having just finished three years at Meta, Speer says he’s evaluating options ranging from tech hardware companies to starting his own business. He could cast the net wider if he wanted; earlier in his career he worked in banking, travel and the multi-faceted world of General Electric.

For Norman Dupree, the search for fast-growing fields has taken him out of tech — and into real estate. His bio includes high-impact stints at WeWork and Facebook, where he was the go-to man in getting new buildings’ security systems in shape. Now, Dupree says, he’s focusing on whatever new growth opportunities “my skills are relevant for.”

If tech’s slowdown persists, that’s an unexpected boon for consulting firms, government agencies and other employers that have been starved for technical talent. Such organizations constantly have openings for software engineers and specialists, but have struggled to fill such positions during the tech boom. Now their hopes of landing talent may be brighter.

“All strategies continue to lead to technology,” Accenture chief executive Julie Sweet told investors last month. Even though Accenture’s massive consulting practice defines it as a professional-services company, it’s easy to see it as a tech company in disguise. Sweet’s latest list of Accenture’s priorities is thick with tech-related focus areas, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and the metaverse.

Even Kendra Sinclar, the Facebook manager turned motel operator, says her tech-sector habits are valuable assets in her new role. Among them, heavy use of Meta’s Instagram to promote her motel. 

Insta is getting the job done, Sinclair says, but there’s one rueful aspect to her new role. “When I’m curious about a new feature,” she confides, “I can’t walk down the hall and ask a product manager about it.”

Methodology

Job transitions are calculated from updates to LinkedIn profiles. Inflow/outflow ratios reflect the number of inflows to the industry for every outflow (i.e for every 1 person leaving the industry, how many enter). Trends reflect similar periods (October through December) in 2021 and 2022. Industries are ranked by the rate of change in their inflow/outflow ratios. First jobs, student jobs, side jobs and internships are not included.