After bubble busts: The generalist-specialist tradeoff in it career mobility post dotcom

Abstract

The advancement of information technology (IT) has profoundly changed the labor market in the last few decades. The IT labor market features rapid turnover, rendering IT career mobility a persistent challenge to organizations and a grand concern for IT workers. Past organizational research emphasizes the generalist-specialist tradeoff in career mobility. We examine the generalist-specialist tradeoff with 5 million IT-related job records from an online professional networking site. Using the 2000 dotcom crash as a natural experiment, we construct a matched sample for IT workers in internet and non-internet companies. We find that while individuals in internet companies are at higher risks of unemployment following the bubble bust, generalist employees are more likely hired by non-internet companies for IT and managerial positions. Generalist experience thus buffers market uncertainty and is more resilient than specialization, providing better job security and career prospect after the tech bubble bust.