McKinsey and its consulting industry peers face headwinds
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
But that was 25 years ago.
There are quite literally analysts and sr analysts on every project whose entire job is just creating and editing powerpoints, sending them to their partner managing the case, getting feedback and repeat. Nothing else, just powerpoints. They may sit in on some meetings themselves but don't really offer much in the way of actual expertise in any meaningful way. Many of these people have literally never worked in the sector/field they are supposed to be consulting/advising on
They all have due dates basically every night for a new powerpoint presentation and that is literally the only deliverable for many of the people on a given case (client project).
While I was paid a lot for the job, often multiples of the developers working for any given client and it was hyper stressful, there's probably not a single project I can think of where the client wouldn't have been better off just doing things themselves and hiring full-time positions or even contractors who aren't one of these giant complex expensive firms.
Now that isn't to say there aren't a handful of very valuable/knowledgable people staffed to a project, but I'd wager on the average project only like 10-20% of people have anything of actual value to offer.
The two most capable managers looked at new organization they were supposed lead and left. So it was headless for next two months. Remaining people inckuding manageme t spent a lot of time doing nothing for months complaining in the kitchen. We all got used to low productivity as normal. Then I left, not sure what happened after.
With what I've seen, these "consultants" are the most vulnerable segment to LLMs, especially LLMs tuned to the corporation's information store. Which means that the consultant's largest clients will disappear first.
Of course the consultants will try to sell "we will help you implement these LLMs for your business".
YMMV
But that's a subset of what they'll take money for lol.
* Making beautiful looking powerpoint slides really quickly.
* Telling other people to make beautiful looking powerpoint slides really quickly.
* Convincing the client that beautiful looking powerpoint slides quickly answered their problem.
They are never going away. It doesn't even matter what they put in those slides and they won't be going away.
I’m at McK and it’s just a bit slower than average imo.
The previous ones were much, much more substantial. Mostly on a liberal leaning east coast folks don’t want the firm to be doing conservative or foreign authoritarian work basis.
Edit: authoritarian lite, let’s say. E.g. no Russia fwiw
There were a few stories about the involvment of the company in tobacco, the opioid crisis, and some geopolitical stories that made it quite a bit more than just something about a liberal POV.
Corporate espionage implies theft of secrets. McKinsey isn’t handing out secrets. They’re handing out largely public info that’s a pain to compile for high level strategic stuff.
There’s literal benchmarks and industry reports that are more like products. There’s also just chatting with well connected people who know an industry. But most of the time it’s a junior hire using Google to fill out the basic rundown of what peers are doing on a problem.
But imo it’s just basic context setting.
but it’s not that bad
You're hardly arguing with volunteers to the Sisters of Charity.
But I don’t care. I’m just commenting out of mild interest. It’s not exactly a big cost to comment.
I imagine how bad it would become if you'd have to get an official certification to do consulting work
It's really too bad that Jeff Skilling is one of the few notable McKinsey associates who have ever spent real time in prison. There should be more.
I understand why you might disagree with that, and I understand why your reading comprehension might work better when not discussing your employer, but I have to say, you're really not helping your firm's reputation here.
It also (probably unintentionally) calls out entry level workers specifically.
When was the last opioids crisis settlement, a month and a half ago? How much is it already? Almost a billion dollars.
Nuanced, yep.