Well done on getting the graduate school admit(s) to your dream university for the Fall 2022 intake. You worked tireless nights working on your application materials and spent a decent chunk of your savings submitting applications for grad school. Good stuff, congratulations! However, it would be best to consider some recent financial events/trends before you board that flight to fulfil your overseas academic/professional ambitions.
The recent fluctuations in the stock market might mark the beginning of a change in the economic world order. If you are an international student aiming to work in the technology sector from Asia/Eastern Europe/Middle East/Africa or any lesser privileged parts of the world, starry-eyed about the six-figure salary. You might want to consider the possibility of a predicted recession in the US economy in 2023-24, which might not let you live the great American dream on the West Bay. So before you take that colossal student debt on your a*$, do due diligence on the situation before entering the labour market post-graduation with an impending recession monster under your bed.
Wait! But what's going on?
To all the employment seekers/techies out there, I suppose it's a good idea to track the performance of the top employers in the tech arena. You may like it or not, but their performance will determine yours, and it's beyond your control. So keep a tab! Better safe than sorry.
Let's have a comparative look at what happened to the stock prices of the celebrated FAANG and some other big tech companies in the recent past. If you don't know what FAANG is, well, you should. It's a market jargon used for collectively mentioning the most prominent tech giants of the century. F- Facebook(Meta), A-Amazon, A-Apple, N- Netflix, G-Google(Alphabet)
1-month trends captured from Google Finance show an average decline of about 18% in the value of stock prices of FAANG and some more leading tech firms on NASDAQ. With Netflix leading the show at a drop of 43%, closely followed by Amazon.com, Inc. and Uber Technologies, to name a few. Basically this happened while you were busy sending your transcripts to your grad school and getting that visa appointment.
Now let's take a bigger picture of what happened to the celebrated FAANG in the last 6 months. An average drop of 30%. Wow. So basically, what 1$ in Dec 2021 is less than 70 cents in May 2022 if you are associated with these firms' economic ecosystem. (And this was happening in the backdrop while you were writing your Statement of purpose and celebrating those admits.)
Uh okay. So, where are we headed?
Carrying forward from Ray Dalio's 'Principles of Dealing with the Changing World Order'. We are in the decline phase of the big cycle of the great American economic world order. It began around 1950 when the allied forces won the Second World War and established the new world order with the USA at the forefront. So, where are we headed? It's difficult to answer at the moment. Still, according to the speculations and economic predictions by the Deutsche Bank, we are looking at a major recession in the US economy in 2023-24 as published on CNNBusiness.
Image from Ray Dalio's 'Principles of Dealing with the Changing World Order'.
What do the tech professionals in the USA have to say about the situation?
While this indicates a bad job market in the upcoming years, nothing is set in stone. The Nasdaq composite down of 25% in the technology sector for the past year raised my concerns about understanding the ROI of my investment in education at the moment. After the recent news about the tech hiring freeze at Meta, as their revenue slows and inflation concerns increase. I started digging the internet and talking to my network of professionals working in technology teams based out of the states. I found a mixed sentiment among Meta, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft employees. Here is what they had to say.
What might have caused this?
The inflation of the last 40 years was triggered by the soaring inflation rates post the COVID lockdown.
The war in Ukraine. [That helped for sure! -_-]
Upheaval in the crypto market. Another algorithmic stable coin [USDT] didn't prove to be so stable after all. Explained best by Matt Levine in his opinion column on Bloomberg here and by Packy McCormick in his recent Not Boring blog here.
What might be the effect?
Deflated number of job opportunities for graduates in 2023-24.
Lesser negotiation power for candidates entering a labour market during a recession.
Lesser salaries leading to a longer time required to pay off the student debt.
Losing the financial freedom you already have in your home country.
So what's the final word?!
All I can say at the moment is to keep those window shields open and fasten your seat belts. It's gonna be a bumpy ride. 😈
PS: I am not a financial authority. I am a product designer working in the tech industry, planning a career growth thorough through education/overseas academic accreditation. The information presented here is a collection of my thought process in calculating the ROI of the academic endeavour of a master's STEM program in the USA at this point in time. So please feel free to correct me if I am wrong and leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I would be happy to take the discussion further. 🙂
Comentarios