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McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

reuters.com

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Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#221

Post by abduhl »

ves wrote: post #179
klmadfejno wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm glad you enjoyed my prose so much. All I'm trying to convey is that my day to day is listening to client problems, looking at data, talking to employees, and presenting findings. It's neither a conspiracy, nor a scheme, nor a world of wealthy indulgence. I make a healthy wage, but its likely lower than I could get in tech. Like almost every company in the world, its a normal company.

> Like almost every company in the world, its a normal company. This in a thread about McKinsey settling for over half a billion dollars over its role in causing the opioid crisis, which is just one of the many, many arrows in McKinsey’s “aiding and abetting horrible shit” quiver. This was literally a conspiracy and a scheme. On just the basis of “harm caused” alone, McKinsey is far from a normal company.

If we were to rank large companies based on how horrible they are to society then certainly McKinsey is indeed “far from a normal company.” They’re far lower than the normal company, in my opinion. I’d go so far as to say they’re not even in the top 75%. Social media, other big (and small) tech, pharma, and banking have caused objectively (and subjectively) orders of magnitude more harm to our society than a bunch of reviled white collar consultants whose only real power is to give a voice to and action plan for all the bad ideas that a company has.

It’s easy to sit here and talk shit about management consultants while forgetting that management consultants aren’t coming up with these ideas in a vacuum. Isn’t the common refrain of an MBA-hater that all consultants like McKinsey do is “parrot back something a lower level grunt already knows”? Someone at the company gave them every idea they’ve ever had, or so the argument goes.

They can’t both be totally useless mouth pieces while also being evil geniuses responsible for this stuff.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#222

Post by LatteLazy »

sharkweek wrote: post #10

The absolutely most fascinating part of this is learning how McKinsey has long argued that making recommendations that businesses may or may not act on does not create legal liability (until this). I’m trying to see that argument applied in any other instance and it becomes totally ridiculous. “You see, your honor, I merely suggested to my client that he kill his neighbor in order to take his land, I didn’t think he’…

This case aside, isn't that a well accepted legal doctrine? Encouraging someone to do something is rarely a crime. Incitement to riot is the only exception I can think of.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#223

Post by jankyxenon »

the_drunkard wrote: post #212
toby wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, this is cherry-picking. I don't have an opinion on how useful McKinsey is, but I'll note that no one is pointing out that they also did a lot of work for Microsoft before their big turnaround.

Enron and Valeant are two of the most significant examples of corporate malfeasance over the past 20 years; McKinsey or its partners were directly involved in both. That's not cherry-picking.

I think they work more than a third of F500 companies. What's your definition of cherry picking?

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#224

Post by bob33212 »

aerosmile wrote: post #92
bob33212 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words your clients have incompetent executives and instead of suggesting those people be replaced you do their work for them since they are the ones paying your fees.

It's easy to be critical of executives. A naive narrative could sound like this: "Bob was hired to turn the company around, and 3 months later the company is still bleeding money. Bob sucks." But it's important to understand the two difficult tasks that Bob is facing: 1) Identify all mistakes made by the previous management and come up with a plan to correct them. 2) Get buy-in for your plan and execute it. It might…

It is one thing to bring in some more workers to help you with research you don't have the ability to do. It is another thing to pay someone to make a report backing up a decision you have already made. It is another thing to pay someone to make a decision that you don't want to make, so they can take the blame. The first example is not why management consulting gets a bad name.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#225

Post by BitwiseFool »

Balgair wrote: post #175
BitwiseFool wrote: post #114

When company management wants to make a big change they hire consultants to provide cover and justification for it. The consultants role is to agree to and implement whatever the management's desired change is. The consultants exist to provide an air of authority behind the decision and to act as a smokescreen to the employees facing the change. If the plan succeeds, upper management takes the credit. If it fails, th…

Aside: When this occurs, how do the C-suite look at themselves and think that they are the ones in charge? You'd think that they'd just have the ability to do it regardless, but an expensive whipping boy (almost literally) is the better fit. How political is your org such that this even becomes a possibility to contemplate? What terrible lack of communication and respect between layers causes this? (These questions a…

Imagine you're a VP, or even a C-Suite Executive...

Your employees get to make decisions based on what they think is best, what feels right. You don't have that luxury. Investors, the board, other managers who are vying for your position all demand numbers-based decision making and justification. So what do you do? You hire a well known consultancy to produce documents and data that supports your position. You can now justify your actions by pointing to what they've made for you. And, you have the added bonus of the sunken cost fallacy. "Well of course we took their advice, don't you know how much we paid for it?"

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#226

Post by runamok »

klmadfejno wrote: post #120
jancsika wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether this is a bona fide comment or a troll, I love this comment: * quick witted aikido-move-of-a-sentence to accept OP's insult, thereby disarming it * enormous paragraph made up of short, frank, vague sentences with an compelling rhythm of overarching claims that frame the 20-something haircut's ostensible work in a positive light. It's the wrong generation but I'm reading them in Ari Fleischer's no-nonsense, et…

I guess I'm glad you enjoyed my prose so much. All I'm trying to convey is that my day to day is listening to client problems, looking at data, talking to employees, and presenting findings. It's neither a conspiracy, nor a scheme, nor a world of wealthy indulgence. I make a healthy wage, but its likely lower than I could get in tech. Like almost every company in the world, its a normal company.

You are probably getting paid less than you could be but your billable rate is likely substantially higher.

Not great links but you get the gyst...

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/revealed-mckinsey-partn...

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-McKinsey-charge

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#227

Post by arethuza »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #214
Maarten88 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a discussion on the experiments by Stanley Milgram about obedience to authority, and it applies here. When a consultant gets hired for advise or to "get stuff done", and the result of this is massive profits with a secondary effect of death and destruction, then the consultant is (i.m.o.) morally responsible for that second part as well. And, it seems, legally as well (but let me guess nobody goes to jail).…

As the Stanley Milgram experiments show, most people will do horrible things to others when they can tell themselves that someone else is responsible Turns out this isn't accurate. See https://theconversation.com/milgram-was-wrong-we-dont-obey-a... But as my detective work in the Yale Archives has revealed, in the filmed version of the experiment 65% of participants disobeyed. Yet Milgram edited his film to show the…

That still means 35% of people are happy giving others serious electric shocks if told to by an authority figure?

Not as bad as 65% but still pretty bad!

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#228

Post by mola »

volta83 wrote: post #122
mola wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one wants to believe they have a bullshit job. So we usually tell our selves nice little fairy tales to overcome this cognitive dissonance. Truth is, McK and the like, are there just to give mediocre leaders an extremely expensive psychological crutch needed when human beings face uncertainties. Now that these consulting agencies are the behemoth they are, it's mainly corrupt leaders that are being "pursuaded" to…

> Oh and ppl like you are just cheap "brains" to give the optics of credentials for this sordid affair. 100% whataboutism, and I'm not defending the OP or McK, but I wonder what you think of the PhD "brains" hired at Google that end up being in charge of implementing a menu in Google Carplay. What are they?

They have bullshit jobs.

I don't get what's the point of your question?

I'm saying the OP has a bullshit job which he fails to acknowledge. I'm also saying is that McK only reason for hiring ppl like OP is virtue signalling and nothing else. And finally that McK is mostly harmful to society.

I never talked about why google hires PhDs. :Shrug:

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#229

Post by slumslum »

Ex McK-Intern here: From my short-term experience, I'd say there are folks who genuinely want to help their clients while others are mostly in for the prestige and the money. The business model of staffing young graduates alongside more experienced people is actually quite reasonable as the experts could steer the overall project while the juniors would do the number crunching and info gathering. I personally see their value for a broader circle in the sense that if the consultants can make a client $$$ or reduce costs, this can either lead to overall improvement of business and thus increase employment or - in case people need to be fired - save the rest of the employees from their whole company going out of business in the worst case. Just to briefly touch the most common criticisms.

Nevertheless, I decided not to take their offer afterwards, partly due to exactly those shady practices that went well beyond even my quite relaxed sense of business ethics.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#230

Post by ErikVandeWater »

asjldkfin wrote: post #130
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't know too much about this case. But courts can find corporations liable, even if they did a terrible job. It's the same logic as putting the getaway driver in jail for attempted robbery, even if they dropped the clutch and stalled the car. McKinsey could have done a terrible job but also been liable according to courts (who probably just assume white-shoe consultants did a good job anyway).

There’s a difference between a criminal and civil case. Crimes are boolean, civil is proportional in terms of punishment. Nobody is going to jail, so this is a civil case. If you break your neighbour’s car, you pay more if it’s a BMW than if it were a Kia.

Crimes are proportional in terms of punishment. It's called aggravating and mitigating factors.
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