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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

#211

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#212

Post by the_drunkard »

toby wrote: post #183
hirple wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McKinsey are involved in almost every company in the Fortune 500, and have been for decades. Of course they're going to be around for almost any given corporate failure.

Totally agree, this is cherry-picking. I don't have an opinion on how useful McKinsey is, but I'll note that no one is pointing out that they also did a lot of work for Microsoft before their big turnaround.

Enron and Valeant are two of the most significant examples of corporate malfeasance over the past 20 years; McKinsey or its partners were directly involved in both.

That's not cherry-picking.

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

#213

Post by jrs235 »

exikyut wrote: post #185
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…

> ...run of the mill consultents. You spelled consultants wrong :P (Boring clarification: riffing off of your "spelled industry wrong!" bit. Not an actual attack.) I definitely need to learn lucidity or awareness or whatever it is that you springboard off of to be able to read something like this and mentally * hangonaminute* though... I completely went along agreeing with everything, and while I still do after havin…

>You spelled consultants wrong :P

I assume that was intentional.

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

#214

Post by aaronbrethorst »

Maarten88 wrote: post #206
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.

There was a discussion on the experiments by Stanley Milgram about obedience to authority, and it applies here. When a consultant gets hired for advise or to "get stuff done", and the result of this is massive profits with a secondary effect of death and destruction, then the consultant is (i.m.o.) morally responsible for that second part as well. And, it seems, legally as well (but let me guess nobody goes to jail).…

As the Stanley Milgram experiments show, most people will do horrible things to others when they can tell themselves that someone else is responsible

Turns out this isn't accurate. See https://theconversation.com/milgram-was-wrong-we-dont-obey-a...

But as my detective work in the Yale Archives has revealed, in the filmed version of the experiment 65% of participants disobeyed. Yet Milgram edited his film to show the opposite: that two-thirds will do as they’re told.

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

#215

Post by cryptica »

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…

20 year olds out of university know nothing about business, management, finance or the economy. The financial system and economy are in a constant state of flux, everything they teach in university is already outdated 10 years before you even start the degree. As for economics, most of what they teach has nothing to do with the real economy; just some phony models with fancy math which bear absolutely no relationship to the actual current state of the economy. Any executive who can benefit from the advice of a 20 year old shouldn't be in a leadership position in the first place.

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

#216

Post by asjldkfin »

carapace wrote: post #199
asjldkfin wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the advice Purdue asked for bankrupted the company. Just like how asking a programmer to build a garbage program doesn’t mean the programmer is trash, it just means the specs are.

Programmers who build garbage are part of the problem, no?

Not if they build garbage well, the quality of the code and the quality of the product are independent.

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

#217

Post by jankyxenon »

Maarten88 wrote: post #206
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.

There was a discussion on the experiments by Stanley Milgram about obedience to authority, and it applies here. When a consultant gets hired for advise or to "get stuff done", and the result of this is massive profits with a secondary effect of death and destruction, then the consultant is (i.m.o.) morally responsible for that second part as well. And, it seems, legally as well (but let me guess nobody goes to jail).…

Are Instagram engineers partly responsible for depression among teens?

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

#218

Post by klmadfejno »

Maarten88 wrote: post #206
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.

There was a discussion on the experiments by Stanley Milgram about obedience to authority, and it applies here. When a consultant gets hired for advise or to "get stuff done", and the result of this is massive profits with a secondary effect of death and destruction, then the consultant is (i.m.o.) morally responsible for that second part as well. And, it seems, legally as well (but let me guess nobody goes to jail).…

This series of threads is difficult to respond to because there's three theses floating around

1) McKinsey is basically fraudulent and pretends to do things of value

2) McKinsey is a very bad and unethical firm

3) McKinsey masterminds the business world to enable (1) and/or (2)

The main bit of the subthread is about (1), but this response is about (2). All I have to say is that, yes, consultants should be aware that there are consequences to their actions like any other. I don't think that's in question. I'm not sure the stanley milgram experiments are especially relevant but sure.

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

#219

Post by Dwolb »

rvwaveren wrote: post #160
IMTDb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem are not MBA's. The problem is that the incentive of consulting companies are not aligned with the incentive of their clients. Take a big construction project. In the like of the Berlin airport. What do you think is more profitable for the consulting companies : a) A well thought project, done in budget and in time. Where the consulting company gets the whole contract + all the bonuses associated with it.…

Your point about incentives is exactly the structural problem here. I've been a consultant years ago and on a human level we loved projects that ran well. You feel good about yourself and your team for helping the client quickly and efficiently. However, zooming out, it's the incentive system that's completely broken: there is no skin in the game. Consulting firms are too detached from the consequences of their advic…

I’m with ya hear. It’s actually one of the reasons I love start-ups.

You get to recommend a better approach to an industry or technology and then go off and do it all while having equity in the company.

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

#220

Post by jankyxenon »

cryptica wrote: post #215
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…

20 year olds out of university know nothing about business, management, finance or the economy. The financial system and economy are in a constant state of flux, everything they teach in university is already outdated 10 years before you even start the degree. As for economics, most of what they teach has nothing to do with the real economy; just some phony models with fancy math which bear absolutely no relationship…

If it's that obvious, stop to think about a few things.

Why is management consulting a billion dollar industry? Are there that many clueless executives running F500 companies (pretty much all of them).

Or perhaps your understanding of management consulting isn't quite right.

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