Aren't people with the tech skills more likely to be developers, second level support, field engineers, etc?

The support techs are the front line staff who need the people skills to "get the requirements from the customers, so the engineers don't have to"?

There's some troubleshooting involved, but issues that require serious in depth technical expertise in a certain area are going to be escalated to someone who can be specialized in that area. The support tech has to be a jack of all trades.