4 ms·
What strikes me is when the clients know this to be true, but don't actually care. They have a budget and they need to spend it! Looking forward to the day when
by jrbapna 10y ago
What strikes me is when the clients know this to be true, but don't actually care. They have a budget and they need to spend it! Looking forward to the day when the market catches up to them.
- beachstartup 10y agoah yes, a textbook NMP [1], CYA [2], OPM [3] scenario. [4] [1] NMP: Not My Problem [2] CYA: Cover Your Ass [3] OPM: Other Peoples' Money [4] Profit!
- rdtsc 10y agoThe way it works is like this -- consultants like these have to have a good reputation. They are effectively the sacrificial goats to absorb failure. If the project fails everyone can say "but we had the best of the best doing this, if they failed, surely nobody could have done it better". In that model it makes sense to hire the most prestigious candidates. Also remember clients also have their own bosses, board of directors, investors and supervisors to answer to. It seems with Palantir it worked well with CIA. If you ever sold anything to Uncle Sam, you know he loves to pay lots of money and then pretty often it ends up not being used or forgotten. Guess they tried that with a few big companies but found out that Coca-Cola is not as careless with its budget as Uncle Sam, and \had a hard time convincing them to just throw away tens of millions on some analytics thing.
- deprave 10y agoIt's part of the cowardice game. How do you both take credit when you succeed and avoid blame when you fail? You take an action that's easy to justify by external validity factors. If you succeed, you made the call, you take the credit. If you fail, you justify it using external validity factors ("they're one of SV's most valued companies! they only hire Stanford graduates!") to indicate there's no way anyone else could have done better.
- arkades 10y agoIt's not a budgetary issue. Generally the consultants are brought in to bring about a conclusion that the managerial team already decided upon. The expense and prestige of the consulting firm now backs this conclusion with sunk cost fallacy, and the managerial team has political leverage to push forward with their plan. And, if it fails, political cover.
- jonnathanson 10y agoThis. People bring in consultants for one of two possible outcomes: 1) Rubber stamp a preconceived conclusion or idea; 2) Test out an idea and take the hit if it fails. Basically, they are there to ensure a win-win scenario for the commissioning member(s) of management.
- hkmurakami 10y agoAnd to that end, the elite degrees confer a sense of authority and prestige. Additionally, "sounding smart" is a skill that such students have cultivated over the years in addition to but independent of possibly also being smart.
- ParanoidSP 10y agoHuh, that got a bit convoluted near the end.