If you are interested in what management consulting is or looking for an interesting read (the background is fascinating and unexpectedly entertaining), I highly recommend the book Lords of Strategy referenced in the article. Here's the WSJ review which gives a good summary: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870486930457510... and a BW interview of Kiechel: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca20100...
The origins of management consulting are actually in Frederick Winslow Taylor's work around scientific management, using a stopwatch to cut excess labor on railroads... you could call it hacking labor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
I worked at BCG before coming to FeeFighters, as did our CEO. My 2 roommates worked at McKinsey and Bain, so I have a pretty good perspective on the industry. This article goes way overboard on the prestige associated with working at McKinsey - noone at my school chose an offer from McKinsey if they had one with BCG or Bain (more of a culture/fit decision than anything else at that point). I worked with multiple Rhodes and Baker scholars at BCG... but you don't get to 10,000 employees only hiring the smartest guys in the room. People are generally VERY smart, but you also have partners where you wonder how they got there. There are a few different types of partners... the rainmakers (they can sell), the teachers (awesome to work with, they teach junior people a lot), and the ones that do amazing client work. I hated working for rainmakers.
Working in consulting can be an awesome time... at times, you get to do strategy work that decides how billions of dollars will be deployed (that is when you do pure strategy work). But at other times, you're spending days building gantt charts deciding who will manage a particular document in a new organization (most of the work these firms do now - they had a desire to grow, so they take on shitty operational things that they aren't well suited to, to create an "ongoing relationship" with clients). As for recycling stuff, sure - you are paid for your expertise and part of that expertise was learned at your competitors. It is no different from hiring anyone from a competitor, which happens all the time, even at junior levels. There is a huge chinese wall where you can't get information from someone who serves or has served a competitor.
BTW - there are certainly skills that transfer well from the consulting world to startups... I wrote about some of them (sub consulting for MBA) http://feefighters.com/blog/should-you-hire-mbas-at-your-sta...