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Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

economist.com

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Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#111

Post by LaundroMat »

samdung wrote: post #58

I have a small story about McKinsey from friend of mine in the Indian Bureaucracy from about 10-12 years ago. McKinsey was doing some work for their dept. I asked him what they did. He said, "McKinsey asked us for lots of information. Then they put it into a dossier and gave it back to us."

As the saying goes, you pay a consultant to look at your watch and tell you what time it is.

Sometimes this means consultants bring you back to the right perspective, sometimes it means they don't add any value.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#112

Post by whatever1 »

nothercastle wrote: post #101
whatever1 wrote: post #36

With labor becoming fungible in the eyes of c-suites, the holders of institutional knowledge are the libraries of the consulting firms. Consulting firms also have tech talent that traditional businesses had no access to in the past, so any large scale data driven related project is done with consultants. However: 1. The costs are insane and probably we reached the point where the benefits do not justify the prices th…

Traditional mfg companies don’t understand tech. They don’t like that tech employees demand higher wages and benefits and hire bottom tier talent or try to convert existing non tech employees into programmers.

Which kinda makes sense. The work of an SWE at big tech can bring in a ton of cash due to (almost) infinite scaling of software and (almost) zero marginal cost.

But as an SWE at a manufacturing company, how much can your work increase their revenue/profit? The bulk of their income is still coming from the widget/commodity they are producing.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#113

Post by whatever1 »

jumping_frog wrote: post #93
whatever1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nobody left, old enough, to remember that the last project with that consulting firm failed.

Are we living in middle ages that electronic records don't exist of what happened in the past engagement. Maybe one can locate the last McKinsey dossier on OneDrive? The problem is and always was of incentives of people involved.

Would you trust a random soggy doc for which you don't know the person who wrote it and their competence, or the flashy deck from McKinsey? The answer is 99% of the times: McKinsey.

Only time that answer is different is when a person in power is still around and they pretty much veto the engagement with a consulting company.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#114

Post by Discordian93 »

ljm wrote: post #107
OptionOfT wrote: post #61

It was a really interesting place to work at a Software Engineer. It made me understand the business. It made me understand that doing the right thing isn't valued. You do the thing that has the shortest ROI. It also made me realize that it is horrible to build software with people who expect short term deliveries like the usual McKinsey engagement. People who expect that the automation of an Excel file takes the sam…

I had a hard time working for an ex-McKinsey/Deloitte/MBA type a while ago for similar reasons: it was always favourable to push a quick hack to resolve an immediate issue, and literally nothing else mattered. If you had to fight fires all hours day, night and weekend to keep on top of it, then so what? That’s the job. Getting heart palpitations because the red circle came up on the Slack icon on your screen? That’s…

Other than code related data annotation for LLMs, this is the only kind of work I've ever been able to find in software development, all the consulting shops big or small work like that here. When I read about people having proper testing, code review, product managers setting actual expectations of what the software should do... It sounds like a wonderland to me.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#115

Post by throw4950sh06 »

Discordian93 wrote: post #114
ljm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a hard time working for an ex-McKinsey/Deloitte/MBA type a while ago for similar reasons: it was always favourable to push a quick hack to resolve an immediate issue, and literally nothing else mattered. If you had to fight fires all hours day, night and weekend to keep on top of it, then so what? That’s the job. Getting heart palpitations because the red circle came up on the Slack icon on your screen? That’s…

Other than code related data annotation for LLMs, this is the only kind of work I've ever been able to find in software development, all the consulting shops big or small work like that here. When I read about people having proper testing, code review, product managers setting actual expectations of what the software should do... It sounds like a wonderland to me.

Yeah, unfortunately you need a proper startup culture at your location to have access to companies small and big like that. I don't think there is a single place like that in Europe. Fortunately, it's quite easy to find work for American companies. And well paid.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#116

Post by burnte »

OptionOfT wrote: post #61

It was a really interesting place to work at a Software Engineer. It made me understand the business. It made me understand that doing the right thing isn't valued. You do the thing that has the shortest ROI. It also made me realize that it is horrible to build software with people who expect short term deliveries like the usual McKinsey engagement. People who expect that the automation of an Excel file takes the sam…

I work with a guy who used to be at McKinsey. He's literally the worst coworker I've ever had. Everything needs to be done yesterday, except he takes weeks between responses. He delegates nothing to his people, and constantly tries to take over things from other departments, making himself an INCREDIBLE constraint and burden. They have an insanely toxic culture there.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#117

Post by brtkdotse »

samdung wrote: post #58

I have a small story about McKinsey from friend of mine in the Indian Bureaucracy from about 10-12 years ago. McKinsey was doing some work for their dept. I asked him what they did. He said, "McKinsey asked us for lots of information. Then they put it into a dossier and gave it back to us."

> McKinsey asked us for lots of information. Then they put it into a dossier and gave it back to us."

To be fair, that’s exactly what a psychologist does

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#118

Post by throw4950sh06 »

toast0 wrote: post #108
neilv wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teams compete rather than cooperate [...] political cover for taking the necessary actions they wanted to in the first place That looks like three deeper problems than the consultants were tasked to solve. (Not only do you have counterproductive, misaligned culture; but even the CEO can't/won't fix it; and the CEO even has to play political games, just to work around the bad culture, for smaller goals.)

> That looks like three deeper problems than the consultants were tasked to solve. No, this is exactly the reason the consultants were hired. Not to solve the cultural problems, but to work the broken process. It's not really in the consultants interest to solve the cultural problems anyway, because it drives repeat business.

Very often it's yet another consulting company proving to their clients that the big cultural change they are suggesting needs to be done.

There is big money in doing that too - you gain a client for life if you're successful, and you get to recommend all your friends in Professional Services companies who give you a cut/forward strategy business your way.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#119

Post by throwawaycons »

klelatti wrote: post #20

> Excitement among clients over this type of “generative” AI is also creating opportunities for new work. Mr Schweizer says that BCG has already completed hundreds of projects with clients around the technology. Accenture has booked $1.1bn-worth of generative-AI work in the past six months. During a gold rush teach people how to use their shovels.

[throwaway because ...reasons; also, I ran my comment thru ChatGPT to anonymize it]

I'm currently working at Accenture, collaborating with a well-known German car manufacturer (OZJ). We receive a new RFP almost every other month, and due to our long-standing relationship with them, we end up securing the majority of the projects. We manage to deliver on these projects—or at least ensure they are billed.

Occasionally, we engage in some RAG work or even delve into image generation, though the quality of these outputs tends to be quite subpar. Sometimes, it surprises me that the client even accepts it, but ultimately, they receive a functioning product (most of the time), we get compensated, and the end consumers cover the costs.

Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

#120

Post by geoka9 »

samdung wrote: post #58

I have a small story about McKinsey from friend of mine in the Indian Bureaucracy from about 10-12 years ago. McKinsey was doing some work for their dept. I asked him what they did. He said, "McKinsey asked us for lots of information. Then they put it into a dossier and gave it back to us."

That's how any financial consultant/auditor works: an outside team sets up shop in one of your offices with your management's permission to ask any person in your company for any related information. Then they compile a report/financial statements, send it to your management and collect their fee.
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