Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 572 posts

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

#271

Post by jancsika »

abduhl wrote: post #221
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.

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…

> Social media, other big (and small) tech, pharma, and banking

If you're ordering by importance, I 100% agree with "social media" being at the top of the list, and this almost cannot be emphasized enough.

I say almost because this article is about McKinsey and the role it played in the opioid crises. As an article it's also light on details, so I'm let down that I come to HN-- which is often great at filling in details-- and begin to read low-effort exchanges about the implications of someone's hair cut.

What do people know about McKinsey's relationship with Purdue in this case of pushing opioids into treatments where they didn't belong? I'd like to know more about that. And when I can blithely complain about the shit UX of a billion dollar company on HN and get a direct response from management, I'd expect information from PR nerds about McKinsey's role in the opioid crises and the ongoing lawsuits against them to flow to HN, too.

It isn't productive if we keep hop-scotching over the meat of every article to talk about some other hazard to society that isn't mentioned in the article. If that's going to be the flow then the next article that pops up about Google's monopolistic practices will instantly veer off into whatabout Visa/Mastercard's monopolistic practices, as it did before.

Edit: clarification

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

#272

Post by colinmhayes »

ihaveajob wrote: post #267

I know someone who worked for McKinsey for a few years, and some of the projects he described were straight up slimy. The one I recall right now was helping a big payday lender (read: large scale loan shark) figure out how to get their money back from people who were behind on their payments. The problem was that they can only attempt to withdraw so many times from someone's bank before they're banned, so the agreed…

Same with the people I know at Mckinsey. I makes sense though, companies contract out the work that would cause them bad publicity. Then when someone writes a news story they can say "hey, that wasn't us, it was the consultants."

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

#273

Post by volta83 »

geodel wrote: post #150
volta83 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

At Google many PhDs may end up working on compilers, language runtimes, vulnerability research data center power saving/cooling and so on. And yeah most importantly implementing menu in Google carplay. So I guess difference is Google has many types of work whereas at McKinsey it is slick MBAs facing fools looking to part with their money.

I know of many CS PhDs working at McK doing MBA-facing jobs.

So really, I don't see the difference.

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

#275

Post by abduhl »

Retric wrote: post #250
abduhl wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Having worked at a large management consulting company, the harm isn’t direct but it’s still there. These companies have incredible leverage, but it’s from credentials not competence. Economic harm isn’t as obvious as say water pollution, but diffuse harm is still harm. Anyway, the average company does all the stuff you don’t really think about like making pots, windows, staplers, hearing aids etc. It’s the extreme o…

I'm not arguing that the harm isn't there. I'm arguing that the harm they cause is second order and smaller.

And just as a small rebuttal: the small companies are usually owned by larger companies. So while they may not be "the company" people think of, they're still part of "that company." The connection is certainly just as direct as a McKinsey-client connection.

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

#276

Post by Geminidog »

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.

>It's neither a conspiracy, nor a scheme, nor a world of wealthy indulgence

But it is a crime the company is responsible for that caused many people to die and become addicted to opioids.

You think Kim Jong Un walks among the people he starves to death on a daily basis in North Korea? No. He's too high up. He's in his palace in the capital and he doesn't even see the real state of his country. He just hears about it in reports and goes to do his day to day job like any other person in a company disconnected from the consequences of their actions.

Does this mean Kim Jong Un is not guilty? No. Not. at. all.

Does this mean McKinsey's is not guilty?

Does this mean you're not guilty?

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

#277

Post by klmadfejno »

hospadar wrote: post #236

I wonder what McKinsey's profit on this gig was - if >= $573M, then this is just the cost of doing business, no problem, do it again and make some more $$.

Profit for a study like this is likely on the order of $1M

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

#278

Post by samstave »

jancsika wrote: post #106
klmadfejno wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

>*This is the HN-post version of the pharma commercial pattern of showing heartwarming images of happy people on swings while the narrator enumerates horrific side-effects.*

OMG this is the bes sentence I have read in months! Thanks

---

I worked with a guy who was a previous McKinsey exec and now is the "uber of Dubai" founder and a billionaire and he is slimy AF.

I have worked with multiple companies such as McKinsey PWC and others and their consulting practices are all bullshit.

Now, thats not to say that any large company does not need some financial oversight/consulting/auditing - but still these consultancies are fucking vultures and are more likely to help you "cook your books" than correct your books...

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

#279

Post by onetimemanytime »

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.

>>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.

A fool and his money...that's their problem TBH. Those that hire them aren't grandmas on Social Security or mom-and-pop stores, they are supposedly super sophisticated businesses.

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

#280

Post by maybelsyrup »

One of my first jobs out of college was at small management consulting firm founded by an formerly very high level McKinsey guy. In a bigger firm, I wouldn't have had much contact with this person, but since we were tiny, he would often be out in the field with the junior people.

One week I found myself with him in some faraway city. We were a bit lost (this was before smartphones) and late for our next appointment. He was frustrated about it because we couldn't get a cab to save our lives. As the minutes ticked by, he'd get more and more irritated, muttering to himself about losing the fucking clients, etc. You can imagine one of these master-of-the-universe types when they get indignant; it's just like the movies.

At some point in all the running around, he notices how he's acting and tries to summon some perspective on it all, get out of his frustration. "You know," he said, "when the plague comes, society's not gonna need management consultants, nor is anyone gonna miss us. We'll get to the meeting when we get to the meeting; no one's gonna die because we're not there."

From a guy who I'd only known as this very hard-charging white collar business guru, a guy who fell out of a Tom Wolfe novel, this was unexpected and funny to young, naive, impressionable me. I got the impression that while he may not have completely rid himself of being annoyed at being late, he was also sincere. I think about this moment a few times a year, actually, something I wouldn't have predicted.

Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure that at the highest levels, these people know that they're not giving civilization all that much, and that this is never very far from their minds.

Post reply on HN