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Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#121

Post by geodel »

underdown wrote: post #117
slg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, this lets the CEO appear unbiased to all the people who "lost". So they can get on board with the new policy but not feel like the CEO shot them down personally, which is bad for morale, can lead them to quit, etc. The flip side is that it is also bad for morale for someone to be recommending a solution for some time, the recommendation is ignored, a consultant is hired, the consultant recommends the same solu…

Wouldn't one enjoy some benefits from being proven right?

I haven't seen enlightened management who appreciate people who are proven right. It is mostly interested in people proven wrong face consequences. Those who got it right are just doing their day job.

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#122

Post by munchbunny »

slg wrote: post #107
crazygringo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly this. Within any organization, you can have 3 or 6 important people pushing in completely different strategic directions. And it can be clear to any unbiased observer that there's only one good, responsible choice, but within your org that gets met with essentially "but that's just your opinion , man". So you call in a consulting firm and they deliver what most of the people already know. The consultants…

>Also, this lets the CEO appear unbiased to all the people who "lost". So they can get on board with the new policy but not feel like the CEO shot them down personally, which is bad for morale, can lead them to quit, etc. The flip side is that it is also bad for morale for someone to be recommending a solution for some time, the recommendation is ignored, a consultant is hired, the consultant recommends the same solu…

Wasn't sure if this was an autocorrect problem, but if it wasn't, by "exasperated" did you mean "exacerbated"?

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#123

Post by cafard »

I don't remember seeing HN articles about McKinsey before this month or last. Now there are three articles about McKinsey on HN, including one that says that the Houston Astros' sign-stealing exemplifies the decline of a McKinsified America. (Or maybe it's the Astros that are M'd.)

How did it become the flavor of the month?

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#124

Post by txcwpalpha »

austinhutch wrote: post #35
riazrizvi wrote: post #25

I'm sorry but no case is made to support the idea that taxpayers are buying generic advice. Let's agree that the service buys a fresh college grad assigned full time. The grad might be a customer contact collecting and organizing customer issues before presenting them to internal subject matter experts, and then presenting those findings back to the client. I'd like to hear evidence to support how the service is fres…

> The grad might be a customer contact collecting and organizing customer issues before presenting them to internal subject matter experts, and then presenting those findings back to the client This might describe how technical consulting is done at big firms where the output is a product, but when the output is strategic documents... this is grunt work done by the front line analysts with a generic playbook. There i…

FWIW this is the direct opposite of my experience working in both strategy and technical consulting. When it comes to dev work, it often actually was just a 23 year-old new grad writing code with little oversight (when I was 23 I actually wrote a lot of code that was reviewed by no-one, tested by only myself, and is probably still being used across a couple of F500s). Strategy work on the other hand was almost always reviewed and revised by several tiers of higher-up, more experienced consultants before being delivered to the customer.

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#125

Post by slg »

munchbunny wrote: post #122
slg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, this lets the CEO appear unbiased to all the people who "lost". So they can get on board with the new policy but not feel like the CEO shot them down personally, which is bad for morale, can lead them to quit, etc. The flip side is that it is also bad for morale for someone to be recommending a solution for some time, the recommendation is ignored, a consultant is hired, the consultant recommends the same solu…

Wasn't sure if this was an autocorrect problem, but if it wasn't, by "exasperated" did you mean "exacerbated"?

Yep, although I can't blame autocorrect. I simply spelled it wrong and lazily chose the first suggestion from the browser's spell checker without giving it much thought. Thanks for the heads up.

Ironically the situation is exacerbated leaving the person exasperated.

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#126

Post by sjg007 »

organsnyder wrote: post #86
z3ugma wrote: post #21

I was a technical project management consultant for a long time. The value that most orgs get from a consultant isn't really in the advice the consultant gives them, it's the political cover to make changes they knew they should make all along, but didn't have the social capital or the focus to make those changes until they had a person in a chair across from them.

That's also Epic's (the healthcare software vendor) big value proposition. Their software is okay—among an industry filled with shit, their turd is at least polished. But their delivery model is incredible: they make customers woo them (shouldn't vendors be doing the wooing?), and they have a prescribed way of doing things if they decide you're worthy to purchase their product. What you get in return is a constant cu…

I mean, honestly, for a medical record system, if you allow a million doctors specific customization then as a company you are going to be in for a bad time. Epic is basically the Borg at this point as well. Any customization should come from a consultancy via some well defined interface.

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#127

Post by johnnyo »

codesforhugs wrote: post #81
smacktoward wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of lawmaking, the usual way to deal with this problem isn't with front-end analysis, but rather by adding a "sunset provision" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision ). That's a clause in a bill that requires it to be re-authorized periodically in order to stay in effect. If a law with a sunset provision ends up causing unintended consequences, then lawmakers can let it die just by doing nothing…

If I were writing the constitution for a representative democracy today, I think it would include mandatory sunsets for all legislation. Yes, this would lead to the legislature spending a lot of time just reauthorizing existing legislation, but I would argue that the majority of new legislation being passed in modern representative democracies would be better off as revamps of existing legislation anyway.

This assumes you don’t have gridlock in the House/Senate, so it’s a bad idea.

We already have govt shutdowns when we can’t pass a budget, imagine if a law that legalized gay marriage was allowed to expire, or one that granted people health care or immigration status.

Even if a non-discrimination law only expired for a short period of time, that would be enough to do real damage to people’s lives.

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#128

Post by cobbzilla »

iudqnolq wrote: post #113
jshaqaw wrote: post #95

Former McKinseyite here (and one reasonably skeptical of the firm as a whole)... nobody hires McKinsey for fresh college grads. That’s just something they tell fresh top of class Ivy League college grads to make them feel important. Clients hire Directors to give them peer level strategic counsel. How they technically allocate payment for time across consultants is just backfillling to get to a number already agreed…

I'm trying to parse the phrase "peer level strategic counsel". Does it mean advice as good as the advice we're giving other firms like you?

If I'm Corporate Big Wig I am not taking direction from some fresh-out or underling. I want to talk with the Partner -- a corresponding Big Wig who has "peer-level" status with me. We hash out the big-picture strategy, then the underlings do all the hard implementation work.

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#129

Post by mmierz »

iudqnolq wrote: post #113
jshaqaw wrote: post #95

Former McKinseyite here (and one reasonably skeptical of the firm as a whole)... nobody hires McKinsey for fresh college grads. That’s just something they tell fresh top of class Ivy League college grads to make them feel important. Clients hire Directors to give them peer level strategic counsel. How they technically allocate payment for time across consultants is just backfillling to get to a number already agreed…

I'm trying to parse the phrase "peer level strategic counsel". Does it mean advice as good as the advice we're giving other firms like you?

I believe it is intended to mean "strategic advice from someone perceived as a social peer", meaning a high level important executive person, not a junior analyst.

Re: Why Taxpayers Pay McKinsey $3M a Year for a Recent College Graduate Contractor

#130

Post by senko »

iudqnolq wrote: post #113
jshaqaw wrote: post #95

Former McKinseyite here (and one reasonably skeptical of the firm as a whole)... nobody hires McKinsey for fresh college grads. That’s just something they tell fresh top of class Ivy League college grads to make them feel important. Clients hire Directors to give them peer level strategic counsel. How they technically allocate payment for time across consultants is just backfillling to get to a number already agreed…

I'm trying to parse the phrase "peer level strategic counsel". Does it mean advice as good as the advice we're giving other firms like you?

I parse it as you'll get the advice as coming from someone on the same level as you, not a subordinate/minion. So in theory it's level-headed, coming from a person not afraid to state things as they are, and you are covered if you act on it.

This kind of advice is hard to get for the C-suite outside their boardrooms (which may be biased).

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