What do you mean by that? Admittedly, I'm not in the US, but it seems to me that tech work is a very respected profession. Especially compared to service work.

The notion that someone would leave the tech world for a job in the service industry because it comes with more respect is absolutely wild to me. That's so far away from my personal experience I honestly can't fit it into my mental model of the world.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, or maybe your experience is actually super different from mine. Either way I'd be very interested in an elaboration.