McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by ramraj07 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #89

pm90 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opiod work was bad though, let's not avoid that. Sorry that’s all you have to say about your employer quite literally supercharging the opioids pandemic causing unimaginable pain and destruction across America? “It was bad though.” Let me tell you some hard truths. If you’re 20 something you don’t know Jack shit about running a business and the only reason you’re there is because the C Suite wants to “de-risk” thei…

The point is that you can't say that McKinsey are incompetent and not worth the money, while at the same time saying they are so competent that they created the opiod epidemic. It makes you look silly. Doing good economic work for bad people is a (gigantic) ethical flaw, but not a problem with the economic quality of the work and skillset.

Here's a non-contradictory summarisation:

1. McKinseys advice is for the most part useless , often their advice is just politically motivated within the clients offices 2. They have zero morals, they will advice how to optimize the gas chambers (probably not too off the mark, they probably are advising something related to uighurs somewhere, maybe how apple can hide traces of genocide fueled chips from their product lineup) if they can make a couple mills. 3. The despots/murderers recruiting them are still going to go ahead with their addiction rings/gas chambers irrespective of what McKinsey tells them. The argument isn't that McKinsey made the opioid problem worse. Maybe they did but they probably will conveniently agree with us that they were not really consequential. Still doesn't mean everyone from McKinsey shouldn't be considered a dick though.

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

#252

Post by ska » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #145

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.

Consultancy sounds fancy, but when it comes down to it it's fairly mundane. I used to be in consultancy as a software dev, it's basically same job, higher cost. But these companies use consultants because they have tons of money but aren't sexy enough to attract internal employees that do the same thing.

Management consulting is a really different thing to consulting as a developer or specialist..

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

#253

Post by whoknew1122 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #39

tharne wrote: post #4

Too bad they can't be sued for ruining countless businesses with mindless self-serving "advice" meant to do nothing more than get their contracts re-upped. The whole business is a scam built around sending in some 26 year-old with an Ivy League degree and $100 haircut to regurgitate snippets from articles in HBR.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

> "Bringing in consultants is, among other ways, a way to bring in people who can get shit done, moving bricks at lower levels of the org with the political mandate of the top."

Or, to put it another way: You hire a consultant so you can avoid responsibility for your decisions.

"I didn't just fire thousands of people, possibly putting some out on the streets. Nope. We're just right-sizing the company based on the advice of this well-respected consultant with a nice haircut."

Hire a consultant and get a fall guy and the ability to shirk responsibility for the detrimental impact your decisions have on your workforce.

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

#254

Post by ramraj07 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

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.

In this instance I'm more than happy to bring in Godwins rule, but yeah I'm pretty sure there were janitors in the Nazi party as well just doing their job.

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

#255

Post by Vaslo » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #39

tharne wrote: post #4

Too bad they can't be sued for ruining countless businesses with mindless self-serving "advice" meant to do nothing more than get their contracts re-upped. The whole business is a scam built around sending in some 26 year-old with an Ivy League degree and $100 haircut to regurgitate snippets from articles in HBR.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

I’ve worked with McKinsey on 3 different projects at two companies. One project was honestly helpful in trying to get SAP up and running. The other two were worthless, including a strategy deck about CPG food strategy in China. They basically just took our data and the results we had already provided and had a charismatic speaker (Partner?) who worked in China come in and tell the same story. The few original slides they brought were probably all the same nonsense macroeconomic slides they show to everyone remotely interested in Developing markets like China. The CFO was unimpressed and though they still use them for things, we would never go back for Strategy. For the cost we paid for one month of the engagement I could have hired an MBA analyst/manager working full time doing much of this in house.

I personally will not use a big consulting company until we do a better job of forcing consultants to have more skin in the outcome. It’s really nice to come in, have a flashy presentation and then walk out and collect your money. The only “getting shit done” I’ve seen McKinsey do is lining their own pockets.

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

#256

Post by klmadfejno » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

stuaxo wrote: post #243

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.

Just because there are ordinary employees at the bottom doing ordinary boring jobs, doesn't mean that this is not a company that has done all sorts of damage. Most of the huge profits don't go to people like you, but there are huge profits. The opioid crisis has caused untold suffering and death. The amount of money they were fined is a joke that couldn't make a tiny dent in what fixing this. It's small enough that i…

To give some color, the revenue from the perdue work was probably (much) less than 10M, profits, less so. McKinsey's total revenue (not profit (based on a google search)), is like $10B. Losing half a billion is a lot.

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

#257

Post by silexia » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

tarsinge wrote: post #201

ves wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, this sub-thread is a response to: > The whole business is a scam built around sending in some 26 year-old with an Ivy League degree and $100 haircut to regurgitate snippets from articles in HBR.

There are a lot of scammy consultants, but there are also tons of bad employees and whole bad divisions in companies. I run a website design and SEO firm that is highly successful because we actually do the work of building a website and the work of doing the online marketing. Many clients have internal IT or online marketing divisions that are incapable of even making a change to their own website. I find small consulting companies that actually do the work are actually much more valuable per dollar spent than internal employees whose main goal is just to hold on to their job as long as possible and do as little work as they can.

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

#258

Post by ska » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

munchbunny wrote: post #194

andreilys wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”Bringing in consultants is, among other ways, a way to bring in people who can get shit done, moving bricks at lower levels of the org with the political mandate of the top” It seems more likely that it’s a politically expedient way to get cover for a decision (in other words CYA insurance). If the plan fails, blame the consultants. If it works, take credit for having brought them in. It also puts more pressure on e…

It seems more likely that it’s a politically expedient way to get cover for a decision That's certainly one of the reasons you would bring in consultants. I think critics of consultants are, in general, too quick to dismiss the monetary value of political lubrication. If it's going to get your management hierarchy to admit there's a problem at all, or if it's going to get your management hierarchy out of a deadlock,…

McKinsey is particularly known for obfuscating experience level and favoring a funnel of new ivy or ivy-like grad (often at graduate level, mind) through an internal bootcamp approach and out into the world as "expert".

I think that's what the GP was poking at.

You aren't wildly wrong on the job as a whole, though reasonably often it's more to escort boring bad ideas through the politics for someones benefit. And on the "amoral" front, they know what side their bread is buttered on.

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

#259

Post by safog » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #39

tharne wrote: post #4

Too bad they can't be sued for ruining countless businesses with mindless self-serving "advice" meant to do nothing more than get their contracts re-upped. The whole business is a scam built around sending in some 26 year-old with an Ivy League degree and $100 haircut to regurgitate snippets from articles in HBR.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

Man, you're really getting the short end of the stick here - it's actually pretty surprising because even though the forum is tech heavy, you wouldn't expect this much hate on consulting as a business model.

Outliers like the Opioid stuff aside, I do think most day to day typical things that consultants do is valuable work for companies. Say you're launching a new product and want to figure out cost based / value based pricing - it's either a single person in the company that does that that might not have a lot of experience in that area or a consultant from a consulting company that has a good track record at doing value based pricing specifically. I know who I'm going to pick.

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

#260

Post by gshubert17 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #89

pm90 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opiod work was bad though, let's not avoid that. Sorry that’s all you have to say about your employer quite literally supercharging the opioids pandemic causing unimaginable pain and destruction across America? “It was bad though.” Let me tell you some hard truths. If you’re 20 something you don’t know Jack shit about running a business and the only reason you’re there is because the C Suite wants to “de-risk” thei…

The point is that you can't say that McKinsey are incompetent and not worth the money, while at the same time saying they are so competent that they created the opiod epidemic. It makes you look silly. Doing good economic work for bad people is a (gigantic) ethical flaw, but not a problem with the economic quality of the work and skillset.

Are consultants something like lawyers, in that they will do "good" work for ethical clients and "bad" work for unethical ones? Lawyers can point to the higher values of truth and justice. What are the higher values of consultants, to help them avoid "bad" work?