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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

#301

Post by leafmeal »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #287
haltingproblem wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While amusing, this attempts to humanize them and somewhat whitewash their abominable actions. They are sitting at the top of the power matrix making lives miserable and dangerous for the ones with least power - paycheck to paycheck workers, those with addictions, inmates in Rikers, dissidents. The fact that they are aware of their own lack of usefulness makes the whole enterprise even more cynical and shady.

To the extent that telling you all this story was an attempt to humanize these guys and "whitewash" their behavior (it wasn't), I have some bad news for you: they're human. It does nothing against evil to pretend that the world is composed of a small number of monsters and the rest of us good ones. I'm the first one to agree with you: consulting - hell, fundamental aspects of capitalism itself - are deeply cynical an…

Are people downvoting you because they don't want to humanize someone they hate? Or am I missing something?

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

#302

Post by hindsightbias »

pm90 wrote: post #70
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…

> 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…

> creating chaos in the name of digital transformation

I wonder how many at HN make their living on digital transformation.

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

#304

Post by maybelsyrup »

leafmeal wrote: post #301
maybelsyrup wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the extent that telling you all this story was an attempt to humanize these guys and "whitewash" their behavior (it wasn't), I have some bad news for you: they're human. It does nothing against evil to pretend that the world is composed of a small number of monsters and the rest of us good ones. I'm the first one to agree with you: consulting - hell, fundamental aspects of capitalism itself - are deeply cynical an…

Are people downvoting you because they don't want to humanize someone they hate? Or am I missing something?

You'll have to ask them, I guess, but that's what it looks like. (Encouragingly though, way more ups than downs.)

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

#305

Post by leafmeal »

vypr007 wrote: post #190

Approaching this from a cold math perspective, like a McK consultant would.. $573M settlement for approx 450k deaths, is a a little over $1200 per death if that is given away as compensation at all. Not bad for McK I'd say. The consultants really managed this well.

From the New York Times article, "The amount McKinsey is paying is substantially more than it earned from opioid-related work with Purdue or Johnson & Johnson, Endo International and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, its other opioid-maker clients, a person involved in the settlement negotiations said"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids...

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

#306

Post by a_brawling_boo »

andreilys wrote: post #58
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…

”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…

I was a consultant for ten years, not at McKinsey, but a very small firm that actually was ethical by comparison at least, and actually got some good things done, and then later, at another small company that was completely unethical.

In many cases, there was not any question that your job was to justify a decision that had already been made, or attack another group within the company on behalf of whoever was writing you a check. I was literally told on a number of occasions that regardless of what the SOW said, our job was to make whoever was writing the check look good.

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

#307

Post by jcomis »

a3n wrote: post #129
jcomis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. This likely will not effect partner comp. It will effect the firm, but partners will spin it as the guilty parties are gone and the leaders need to be retained (through comp!) to right the organization. The low levels will absorb it through lower comp. I've worked in consulting for years and no matter what happens, EVER, partner comp is NEVER effected. They will hem and haw about it, discuss it, maybe mak…

Nit: "Effect" is an Entity, a noun. They both start with "E." "Affect" is an Action, a verb. They both start with "A." Effect is sometimes used as a verb, especially in bureaucratese, but not in the way you're using it. With apologies.

ha, thank you.

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

#308

Post by caddemon »

Frondo wrote: post #264
jankyxenon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Instagram engineers partly responsible for depression among teens?

The Facebook engineers who tweaked the news feed to change the ratio of positive to negative news absolutely are partly responsible for that. Remember this one? https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke... > In an academic paper published in conjunction with two university researchers, the company reported that, for one week in January 2012, it had altered the number of positive and negative posts…

I will add they did this experiment partially in response to an academic study that found viewing happier posts on Facebook made people sadder (explained mostly by FOMO).

FB was trying to refute that, and their study was more technically rigorous, but the outcome they were measuring doesn't actually refute the original claim at all IMO. People writing more happy posts on FB does not indicate they are actually happier, it could also be that they wish to broadcast more of their happy moments, or perhaps even just pretend to be happier, in response to the attitude of their feed.

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

#309

Post by cmmeur01 »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #285
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…

As a very early P2P lending participant in the early days of Prosper Lending, I've seen the other side of this. Many borrowers adopt a mindset that they have earned the money they borrowed and don't feel that they need to pay it back. I came in to Prosper with a distaste for the apparent predatory lender tactics and came out with an appreciation that not everything that seems predatory really is. While there are plen…

Asserting your debt as more important than someone's housing does seem like a pretty shitbag thing to me.

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

#310

Post by rconti »

haltingproblem wrote: post #284
maybelsyrup wrote: post #280

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.…

While amusing, this attempts to humanize them and somewhat whitewash their abominable actions. They are sitting at the top of the power matrix making lives miserable and dangerous for the ones with least power - paycheck to paycheck workers, those with addictions, inmates in Rikers, dissidents. The fact that they are aware of their own lack of usefulness makes the whole enterprise even more cynical and shady.

I'm not sure it's all that different from you or I when we are uncaring towards a homeless person asking for money, or when we decide we value a latte more than a week's worth of meals for a starving child in Africa.

Everyone seems to imagine their actions are "normal" and "socially appropriate" but if only they were to break out of their lot in life and reach that next rung up, suddenly they'd be more generous, more compassionate, not driven by the same things, etc.

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