Out of curiosity, what would you have been doing under McKinsey?
I'm curious to understand this phrase, and how the interview process helped.
McKinsey case studies are more similar to real work than most interviews. You're given a large business problem, and then you're responsible for demonstrating the sorts of questions you'd ask a real client in order to do product discovery and get accurate requirements. Then, you talk about the way you'd architect a solution and go into the details if you have time. At the end of the interview, your interviewer asks you realistic questions like a client would.
I do like pair programming exercises (the ones where you get a realistic problem with an open-ended solution, not the type where the interviewer yells at you until you get the One and Only Solution). And McK does a bit of that too, with questions which validate your ability to develop across the stack, but aren't anything you wouldn't encounter in a normal day at work ("implement a JS component in whatever framework you want", "given this table structure, write a query to do X in whatever SQL dialect you want", "implement a basic REST API to fulfill this use case in whatever language you want").
Though I do see that only 1/6 of my interview panel is still there 4 years later?