91–100 of 113 posts
1) they're taking advantage of market conditions to top grade 2) they need to protect partner payouts 3) they will replace these folks over the coming 18 months with cheaper, younger versions (but won't get anywhere near the absurdly low average annual comp of Accenture)
4) They have enormous fines to payout 5) This was mostly backoffice not consultants
These topics on HN (where I know the industry well) make me realize how stupid I must sound when I have strong opinions on things I have nothing but anecdotal experience with. It's humbling to realize that I must also say things that are on par with "can't chatGPT do their job" or "all they do is make slides". In aggregate and over the long term (~100 years or so in the case of consulting), most services find a fair…
I'm suddenly curious whether / how many of McKinsey's actual customers have a child in an MBA program that McKinsey recruits from. Get your company to spend money for a particular consulting firm, and then use that relationship with a particular consulting firm to get a leg-up for your kid?
Are there processes in place at the large consulting firms to prevent this sort of quid pro quo?
These topics on HN (where I know the industry well) make me realize how stupid I must sound when I have strong opinions on things I have nothing but anecdotal experience with. It's humbling to realize that I must also say things that are on par with "can't chatGPT do their job" or "all they do is make slides". In aggregate and over the long term (~100 years or so in the case of consulting), most services find a fair…
> it is likely delivering some value to someone who is willing to pay for it. I'm suddenly curious whether / how many of McKinsey's actual customers have a child in an MBA program that McKinsey recruits from. Get your company to spend money for a particular consulting firm, and then use that relationship with a particular consulting firm to get a leg-up for your kid? Are there processes in place at the large consulti…
Seems like a lot of work for not much payoff.
What is encouraged is treating everyone leaving whether regrettable/non-regrettable with a great deal of love and care -- placement services are pretty good. There is a good chance those ex-McK folk are future clients.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not hire contractors or contract-to-hire for those bursty work needs? Or spin up a separate company and buy services from them?
> Why not hire contractors or contract-to-hire for those bursty work needs? To start, it's not legal. If the people you are hiring are doing the same work as full time employees, with the same work structure, you're not supposed to hire them as contractors. > Or spin up a separate company and buy services from them? I mean, companies certainly do outsource to third parties for "bursty" needs, but if you think this is…
But also, I didn’t specifically mean 1099 independent contractors, just “contractors”. Meaning, people employed for a fixed contract length of 6 or 12 months and then possibly renewed if business is still good.
This seems more like economic belt tightening and would be odd if it’s just McKinsey. McKinsey consults so they hire when clients need more and fire when clients need less. We’ll see if this just ends up being an economic indicator that big companies that can afford high bill rate consultants have less money to spend.
https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sp500margin.pdf
The profit margins (S&P500) have dropped from their possibly all-time highs to what they were back in 2017/18 (the previous highs).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is likely delivering some value to someone who is willing to pay for it. I'm suddenly curious whether / how many of McKinsey's actual customers have a child in an MBA program that McKinsey recruits from. Get your company to spend money for a particular consulting firm, and then use that relationship with a particular consulting firm to get a leg-up for your kid? Are there processes in place at the large consulti…
i'm sure it's happened somewhere...I'm not sure but from what I've seen, incredibly hard to game recruitment. Even if you do, the kid won't survive long -- it's up or out every ~2 years. Seems like a lot of work for not much payoff. What is encouraged is treating everyone leaving whether regrettable/non-regrettable with a great deal of love and care -- placement services are pretty good. There is a good chance those…
Now that's a good deal for McKinsey.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i'm sure it's happened somewhere...I'm not sure but from what I've seen, incredibly hard to game recruitment. Even if you do, the kid won't survive long -- it's up or out every ~2 years. Seems like a lot of work for not much payoff. What is encouraged is treating everyone leaving whether regrettable/non-regrettable with a great deal of love and care -- placement services are pretty good. There is a good chance those…
And those ex-McKinsey executives are not only primed to hire their former colleagues, but assuming they've been doing a good job, they're McKinsey advertisements at their current job. Now that's a good deal for McKinsey.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you worked with Bain or BCG? Are they any more competent?
They are all competent. It’s just that they work for their principal in the company and are always selling. If you think something these guys are doing is awful or dumb, follow the money. The guy signing the checks is calling the shots. McKinsey’s lack of ethics and self-preservation is notable. But they weren’t hoodwinking innocents into preying on the weak. Perdue and the medical providers writing those oxycodone s…
Are they doing anything useful besides telling clueless CEOs what they want to hear?
Is there any difference between a stupid person and a smart person doing something pointless?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you worked with Bain or BCG? Are they any more competent?
They are all competent. It’s just that they work for their principal in the company and are always selling. If you think something these guys are doing is awful or dumb, follow the money. The guy signing the checks is calling the shots. McKinsey’s lack of ethics and self-preservation is notable. But they weren’t hoodwinking innocents into preying on the weak. Perdue and the medical providers writing those oxycodone s…
Another quality comment from Spooky23. Your points cannot be understated. I would add my own biased and limited insight; companies should not* investigate the history, decision-making, conflicts and other explosive topics that makes a company tick. The kind of topics managers gossip about but are loathe to put into writing as key insights, either out of fear or out of a lack of detachment.
If the company needs that "central intelligence" function enough to hire internally, the company is probably dying, i.e. the management has failed and can no longer produce intelligence. But when management fails every now and then, executives will bring on a neutral third party to perform this kind of sensitive research, which could lead to heads rolling. Or that third party could just be a hatchetmen who does the killing themselves.
McKinsey’s brand has taken a beating these last few years with the company going from scandal to scandal. The NY Times has been doing a whole string of stories on the firm’s questionable business practices and ethics. Funny though how it sounds like, per their own admission, McKinsey badly mismanaged running their own internal operation and woke up to realize they need mass layoffs. Sort of causes one to question how…
Classic example of this is Bain almost going bust during the 1990s. Mitt Romney, who by then had left to start Bain Capital, had to come back to right the ship.