"Tech worker" is too broad a brush. If you aren't good at web or mobile development, or living in a certain few hot areas, you don't really have this luxury either. Most tech workers do not fall into this category, and have to deal with massive corporate bureaucracies and acronym soup job reqs like everyone else.

Yeah you really do need both, the right skills and the right location, to gain upward mobility. That's not to say tech's like every other job even if you don't have upward mobility. You still don't have to fear getting let go, we had a IT help desk type guy get fired, took him all of a week to find another gig. His earning potential is capped, but it's still pretty nice compared to non-tech jobs.