121–130 of 197 posts
McKinsey has been doing "silent layoffs" in the last few review cycles, i.e., shrinking overall headcount after performance reviews – as there's not enough work to go around. Hard do meet the bar for a one-year BA, if you've only been on 1-2 studies – which is not exactly your fault.
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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.
Generally there Firms prize "first principles" thinking and don't put a ton of effort into leveraging previous engagements. Think of it like how engineers will throw out a solution and rebuild it rather than understand and build upon it. It is also quite difficult to surface useful information amongst all the noise in the giant archive of documents
Don't all these consulting firms have a really bad record when it comes to large-scale infrastructure projects? Some of the worst examples are Ciudad Real International Airport (Spain/McKinsey), Karuma Hydroelectric Project (Uganda/Deloitte), Chongwe River Water Supply Project (Zambia/Boston Consulting Group), Isimba Dam Project (Uganda/McKinsey), Haramain High-Speed Rail Project (Saudi Arabia/Deloitte), and Shoreham…
Not a joke. Our metrics are different from their metrics. They might have succeeded.
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Pretty sure it's a US/UK thing.
Historically speaking, it's common to both UK and US English because it predates the European colonization of America: http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/gotten.htm Personally, for a situation like this I'd use the somewhat more formal 'become' instead!
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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.
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> Its fairly well established that consulting struggles during times of economic uncertainty (but does fine when things are outright bad or good). The culture engendered into corporate America by businesses like McKinsey is exactly what causes economic uncertainty. When the only thing that matters is the number at the bottom of the piece of paper being big enough for some analyst in lower Manhattan to be happy, human…
I thought for sure it was war in Europe, bubbles burst in Chinese real estate, and a general fracturing in the west vs the rest globalization but ok
The difference is, before, people had at least some confidence in their ability to make a living. We've whittled down the average person's wages and job security to the bone and when people don't feel secure, they don't spend, or maybe they do, but they put it on the card... which is another problem and story unto itself. And places like McKinsey are a part of the knife that did that whittling.
Anyways, when people don't spend, businesses don't do better over the long term.
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…
This is a tombstone for humanity and lots of companies if we all do this.
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The economics of consulting are pretty raw: they basically arbitrage the hourly rate of folks. They pay you X and then bill you for X*1.3 (minimum). Folks are starting to realize they could just go direct to the customer, and the recent non-compete uncertainty has made a dent in the quality of talent these places have on their bench. Not to mention most of the talent at these shops are just window dressing for cheap…
I’m pretty sure my average multiple is 6x
It's not just that they're too big—it's that they're morally corrupt and largely unregulated. These firms have been involved in everything from tobacco lobbying to the 2008 financial crisis to pushing opioids, and that’s just scratching the surface. Despite their role in these crises, they’ve faced zero accountability and continue to rake in massive profits. As for their supposed value (which comes directly from ex-e…
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.