15 ms·
The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
- xster 17y agoconfessions of an economic hitman
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago"Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects, a man receives from the free market what he gives to it, his material worth is a running tally of the net benefit that he has provided to his fellow man" I'm not surprised that someone whose ideology makes him believe that Einstein's contribution to society was smaller than that of the bosses of Lehman or AIG would be disappointed by reality. Or is it that reality itself is a "negative externality"? No, I think the issue is one of faulty interpretation of that ideology. It's a serious mistake that people make all the time. They mix up statistical probabilities and individual causality. The average efficiency of markets includes scams as well as geniuses. It includes people who contribute a lot but market themselves badly and it includes the exact opposite.
- shrikant 17y agoI'm not surprised that someone whose ideology makes him believe that Einstein's contribution to society was smaller than that of the bosses of Lehman or AIG would be disappointed by reality. Would you care to clarify? I genuinely don't see where you are getting this from.
- pmiller2 17y agoHe's saying that since Einstein wasn't a rich man, by the author's logic, he couldn't have contributed much to society.
- eru 17y agoNo, he doesn't say so. The reverse of A -> B is not B -> A or even (not A) -> (not B), but (not B) -> (not A).
- Psyonic 17y agocontributes -> rich : (not rich) -> (not contributes)... what exactly are you arguing?
- eru 17y agoEinstein did not contribute to the market, and thus shouldn't be judged by that. You could say he gave his insights away as gifts (or in exchange for reputation?).
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoThe author of the article says "wages represent the value that a worker provides to others". Do you really think Einstein's wage represented the value he provided to others? People work for all kinds of reasons. Money is just one of them as you yourself allude to when you mention reputation. So wages representing the value a worker provides is clearly nonsense. They just represent _expected_ value for those able to pay, and it includes all kinds of distortions like immigration controls.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoThe "runny tally" part says something very different than A -> B. It says A <-> B.
- swombat 17y agoI couldn’t sleep at night. I’d fill up a bathtub and scream into it. Eh, what? Do (normal) people do this? Is it because it absorbs the sounds or something?
- pmjordan 17y agoI'd never heard of it before. I too assumed that muting the sound was the idea, he mentioned he was staying at a hotel, so I guess screaming would have raised some serious suspicion. I wonder if the sound would travel down the drainpipe, though.
- cakesy 17y agoI have never heard of it before, but it seems pretty damn obvious to me what he is saying. Not really worth a discussion.
- kolya3 17y agoMaybe he meant that he got into the bathtub and then screamed underwater?
- lobo-tuerto 17y agoI also think this is the correct interpretation. Maybe he needed to scream out loud to bring a bit of relief to his abused up moral.
- rdtsc 17y agoThe problem is, his description of his morality crisis don't quite match with his actions. He did quit, but it was probably because everyone else saw the ship sinking and was jumping off. His $16k "sacrifice" at the end was not much if he claims he would have made enough to retire by 30s and just live off interest. So, yes, he had a bit some moral struggles, but it sounds like he managed to successfully "overcome" most of them via rationalizations. The blog post was written just to make himself feel better and to somehow turn not taking a little bit of hush money into a great moral victory. Perhaps his future employee will read how honest and devoted to the truth he is...
- carbocation 17y agoHe invokes Excel as an analytical engine several times in this story. I am trying to figure out if he actually considers it to be a powerful statistical engine, or if he is merely using it synecdochically for the benefit of non-technical readers, in order to represent statistical software more generally.
- edge17 17y agoI think his point is that Excel is a powerful weapon in the right hands. Most people don't do much with it, but it's powerful none the less. If dollars were points, many trillions in commerce and complex decisions have been made on the result of analysis done by spreadsheets.
- _delirium 17y agoIt actually is the de-facto-standard modeling engine in a lot of areas, even some scientific areas, but mainly economics/finance. There are some pretty nuttily complex simulations written entirely in Excel, with the visualization part of the simulation done by popping up a chart--- you can even make it animated by popping up a new chart at a certain time interval. There's even a market in commercial spreadsheets, which you buy and load sort of like libraries: http://www.palisade.com/RISK/ http://www.palisade.com/RISK/ Not necessarily a good idea, but somehow it caught on. One possible reason is that it was one of the earlier widely available pieces of software for doing declarative, dependency-based modeling that auto-propagates updates: if box A and box B are linked by a "B = 2*A", then B auto-updates whenever A changes, without you manually writing a propagate-updates loop. You can now do stuff like that in a lot of languages, but it's relatively recent (e.g., it's one of the new features JavaFX variables have).
- eru 17y agoSpreadsheets are the most popular declarative (or zero order functional) languages in the world. There were even talks about spreadsheets on the International Conference on Functional Programming 2009.
- ramchip 17y agoYou can now do stuff like that in a lot of languages, but it's relatively recent Saying "Lisp had it X years ago" sounds perhaps a little weenish, but... that sounds a lot like the Cells library, and the even older Garnet KR. Granted, they're quite a lot less accessible than spreadsheet programs. FRP seems to be modern take on it. It's being very actively researched in the Haskell community.
- kolya3 17y agoGreat description of burnout: "What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work."
- arvinjoar 17y agoThis is so true. My father took on a nightclub all by himself. It was a stupid move, he lost a lot of money doing that. What he was missing was a partner. Not only to lessen his work load, but also to keep him motivated. This is the reason you see musicians take 5 year breaks, or even quitting music. They are lacking in motivation. Look at the band Queen, They are still making music and touring, but half the band has quit. Freddie Mercury died and John Deacon quit music altogether. What did John Deacon lose? His motivation. Brian May and Roger Taylor both had a lot of say in the bands creative process, and that process motivated them to continue, even after Freddie had passed away. Now, Deacon, he wasn't as involved in that process, and he was the one who quit.
- wyclif 17y agoActually, John Deacon wrote one of Queen's biggest hits, "You're My Best Friend."
- thwarted 17y agoNot sure what that has to do with anything, "You're my best friend" was released 21 years before Deacon retired.
- jacquesm 17y agoIt contradicts that he didn't have a say in the creative direction. That may not have been true at the time the gp indicates though.
- thwarted 17y agoIt doesn't contridict that Deacon didn't have a say in the creative direction: having written one song that was popular is not the same as having influence on much of the band's output. I don't know enough about Queen's history to say that Deacon did or did not have creative influence, but citing one song isn't support.
- jonp 17y agoThe author's first two articles on Dubai: http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N16/dubai.html http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N16/dubai.html http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N17/dubai.html http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N17/dubai.html
- strongsauce 17y agothanks for this, tried looking for them after the little footnote but their website had no links to them that i could find.
- repsilat 17y agoInterestingly, a google search for "This is the first in a four-part series on the author’s experiences as a consultant in Dubai." and "This is the second in a four-part series on the author’s experiences as a consultant in Dubai." (with or without the quotes) turns up the other two articles well enough.
- albertsun 17y agoClicking on the author's name will also bring them up.
- bkrausz 17y agoThe tl;dr version: Large consulting companies often tell their clients what they want to hear, which more or less negates the point of consultants but can often pay better. There are ethical concerns here. I like the story, but the article itself has way too many metaphors that cloud the point. Or maybe I'm just too used to having all my stories condensed into 140 characters...
- pbhjpbhj 17y agotl;dr version: Consultants suck. It was TL, I DR it.
- Silhouette 17y agoThere was another important point: a guy new to the consulting business and with no significant amount of relevant training or support wound up being marketed as an expert and became the senior person on each project he joined. I've seen this in action, both from the client side (management brought in absurdly highly paid consultants to back up what they wanted when their own people wouldn't support it) and the other side (friends and friends of friends who went into consultancy firms; few of them have stayed there much longer than this guy). What I don't get is why shareholders (for big companies) or government auditors (for government organisations) don't openly criticise the policy of wasting money hiring these completely unqualified people who either offer no real benefit or actively cause harm to the projects they join. Obviously a genuine expert could offer useful consultancy in their field of expertise, but that doesn't seem to be the MO of these big multinational consultancy shops.
- eru 17y agoPerhaps because they have connections? A lot of their almumni go on and have jobs as managers, who then hire consultants.
- wisty 17y agoMaybe the presumption of connections is all that is needed. Managers have connections. They need to hire people with connections because connections are important.
- waterlesscloud 17y agoIsn't the headline offer he's talking about, which he goes into at the end, really just a very standard clause in a layoff agreement?
- Silhouette 17y agoNo, it really isn't. Not at any of the small businesses I ever worked for, where the guys at the top probably decide these things themselves. Not at a very, very large business I worked for, where the guys at the top probably didn't know the name of anyone in my building and everything was done by HR and Legal automatons. And not at any medium sized businesses I have ever worked for, either. The only time an agreement like this is standard is when you know you're doing something you shouldn't be, and you know you're about to lose your legitimate influence over people who could out you, so you try to buy their silence because to you the cost is cheap.
- waterlesscloud 17y agoHmm. What I meant to get at is that the clause seemed more likely to relate to the "we didn't discriminate against you in letting you go" thing, which he also mentions. In other words, not only will you not sue us for discriminating against you, you won't go around saying we did either. Bottom line, I think it's much more likely that he's misinterpreted the document than that they're trying to silence him. What are they afraid of, that he'll reveal big consultancies tell clients what they want to hear? That's not really a news flash, is it?
- ig1 17y agoIt's pretty standard at both banks and large tech companies that when they make you redundant or fire you that they ask you to sign something similar. I'd be surprised if say Google or Microsoft didn't have something similar in their standard redundancy pay-out contracts.
- shrikant 17y agoI worked at a fairly large UK-based bank, and whatever I signed when I left the place had nothing of the sort. But then again I left of my own accord, and wasn't laid off or 'made redundant', so the situation might be different then.
- lsc 17y agoI don't think this is specific to business consulting, or to Dubai. I know several people who were hired by high-powered technical consulting firms here in the US; all of them were fairly bright, attractive young people with very little experience of any sort.
- sigstoat 17y agoi have the feeling, children or not, that we wouldn't have been hearing this story if the $16,000 offer had been a bit larger.
- sketerpot 17y agoAs Calvin and Hobbes put it, the disturbing thing is not that everyone can be bought, but that the price is often so low.
- thefool 17y agoExactly. He even said that he decided that he would rather have a "hypothetical children" have a rich morally bankrupt father that could pay for college than one with integrity. edit: oops this is pointed out above.
- sree_nair 17y agoCan you tell me Why?. How can you morally judge a person without knowing him?,If his story is true, he gave up a $200,000/Annum Job.
- sigstoat 17y agobecause he spent that entire article telling us how great he was at rationalizing selling out. he pretty clearly had enough practice that he could've handled one last rationalization. as far as judgment, i don't consider attempting to predict someone's behavior a judgment. i didn't say "he is an awful person". that'd be judgment. i was implying, though, that you shouldn't be impressed by his turning down $16k. the only thing that tell us about him is that his price is above $16k, and below $200k/yr. and, there was no giving up of his job, in the end. i quote: "I was not surprised the day I lost my job."
- barrkel 17y agoSomething that leaped out at me: "I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system". Voluntary exchange is not a moral system. A free market doesn't have morals.
- eru 17y agoHe explains his reasoning in the next sentences.
- tokenadult 17y agoThe author of the submitted article may have more sense of history than most Americans. It is a historical fact that Adam Smith first wrote a book The Theory of Moral Sentiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments in 1759, pondering the issue of why people behave morally when they could simply guard their own self-interest. As Smith pondered the issue more, he wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations in which he discussed how free-market trade provides incentives to moral behavior. EVERYONE who is well educated should recognize this quotation: "But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages." In other words, society can be structured so that people will help you or other people who need help while looking out for number 1. Hayek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_von_Hayek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_von_Hayek is good author on contrasting economic systems, showing how they can be actively immoral.
- nearestneighbor 17y agoMy prediction: "The version number finally equals Pi. No more changes to the software are possible, because it's now perfect."
- eru 17y agoWrong thread.
- andrewcooke 17y agoUnfortunately.
- nearestneighbor 17y agoOne of the pitfalls of tabbed browsing.
- tokenadult 17y ago"I wasn’t sure at the time, but having had enough free time of late to ponder such questions, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that having a father who can pay for a top-notch education outweighs the disadvantage of being raised by a hypocrite. Sticking with the job for the sake of a paycheck passes the children test." I wonder how many children get sent to college by dads like that.
- rdtsc 17y ago> I wonder how many children get sent to college by dads like that. Given the amazing human capacity to rationalize everything, I would guess -- a lot.
- WarDekar 17y agoI would guess a lot, too- because human beings are by nature hypocrites.
- AmericanOP 17y agoFreud wrote that to be civilized you must also be a hypocrite
- caffeine 17y agoI think it shows closed-mindedness on his part. They taught him analysis at MIT, but they didn't teach him to think properly. You're a guy with a degree from the top technical school in the world and you've got one of the world's most prestigious consultancies on your resume: you don't think you could go on to find a job in which you could afford your kids' education AND not be a hypocrite? I respect him for standing up after the fact and saying "I'm a wealthy hypocrite." But I don't respect him for going to work there in the first place. You'd have to have spent junior year of college buried in sand not to know it's a game, mostly dirty.
- jackowayed 17y agoWell he was taking a double course-load and working, so that may count as being buried in sand. But still, even if he didn't know beforehand, he figured it out very quickly upon arrival and then stayed for a long time for the money, so I agree with most of your point.
- abalashov 17y ago"I’m a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system — goods and services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent the value that a worker provides to others. Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects, a man receives from the free market what he gives to it, his material worth is a running tally of the net benefit that he has provided to his fellow man. A high income is not only justified, but there is nobility to it." Oh, man, it'd be awesome if we had that. But then, much of the Web 2.0 "industry" about which this site revolves would not exist.
- Gobiner 17y agoI found that quote particularly hilarious given the article in which it is embedded. The article would make a good reference for the wikipedia article on cognitive dissonance.
- microcentury 17y ago"At my salary level, and with my expected advancement path, I could comfortably retire in my thirties." I've heard this or statements like it in quite a few articles over the years, but I've never actually met a retired thirties business consultant. Do they exist and am I just missing them? The only ones I know are well into their thirties, working 70+ hours a week, and looking forward to making even larger boatloads in their forties.
- sscheper 17y agoAgreed. The only retired consultants I've met had white hair (most didn't even have hair).
- rdtsc 17y agoThat actually undermines his main point -- that he stuck to his "morals" and forgone the "large" hush money check at the end. If he was making enough to retire by his 30s then $16k wasn't that significant of an amount. That means the didn't really lose a lot so his "moral" stance is more symbolic, and not the tough financial decision that article might imply.
- abalashov 17y agoEh, maybe. Numerologically, I think you're right, but you do have to keep in mind that a $16,000 lump sum has a lot more subjective value going out the door to an uncertain future and a zero income - at least, temporarily - than it does in the course of making six figures at a stable job. I'm not saying he had any reason to suspect he wouldn't be able to find another job, and even quickly, but it probably wouldn't pay nearly as much and there was no guarantee of that. It's just the depressive state accompanying the sensation of having been fired, even if it's from something you hate in concrete terms.
- ido 17y agoNumerologically I don't think numerology means what you think it means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerology
- holdenc 17y agoThis story is written with a wonderful naivete. Consultants like BCG exist only to lend credentials and competent temporary labor. The companies who hire these consultants are looking for affirmation and peace of mind -- most of them too mired in bureaucracy or incompetence to draw even the most basic conclusions by themselves.
- abalashov 17y agoStill, it's hard to believe that peace of mind is worth paying 5 kids graduated 6 weeks ago in Political Science from Stanford to come give Powerpoints on meaningless, vapid crapola billed to you each at $300/hr, even where such figures don't make much of a blip on the bottom line.
- Uchikoma 17y agoConsultancy is an easy business model. In companies there are people who are paid to decide things. They also have budgets. Often they are called managers. There are consequences with decisions. Managers learned a trick: Give the money of your budgets to consultants to make the decision your company pays you for. If the decision was a good one: The manager was the one who hired the consultants! If the decision was a bad one: Who could blame the manager, even the top consultants of BCG/Berger/McKinsey couldn't make the right decision, he hired the best! Either way: The manager outsourced the work he was supposed to do but still gets paid and freed himself from the consequences. Heaven!
- GFischer 17y agoThey don't want anyone that has a clue and might therefore threaten them! (sadly seen this in my work) Edit: many of the other cynical explanations further down in the thread are quite valid too (scapegoat theory et al)
- edster 17y agoI've worked at so many of the largest companies as an employee, contractor and even overpaid consultant and this is completely true. These companies are completely mired in their own structure that there is nothing they can do to get out. Everyone is protecting their turf and their headcount that you almost have to have "Bob and Bob" come into, even though they don't know anything themselves. When I was working for a professional organization as a consultant, sometimes I would go into gigs where I literally knew nothing about the product that I was supposedly an expert on. I remember specifically one case where I spent a frantic weekend learning about a tech that I was supposed to help this company plan a rollout for because I was the expert. The worst part was these employees had been preparing for this rollout for weeks, so they already had a good grasp of the core and I was still trying to learn all of the acronyms.
- jamesbressi 17y agoI'm so sorry for pointing this out, I loved the article, but was surprised that no one else raised issue with: "Like downloading MP3s, it was a victimless crime." After all these years we know better than to say this carelessly. Is stealing code from a hardworking programmer a victimless crime?
- rictic 17y agoI thought this example was well chosen. Downloading mp3s is a familiar thing that's very easy to do, but may not be ethically defensible in the final analysis. If you want to have a discussion about copyright though, you're poisoning the well by calling infringement stealing.
- roel_v 17y agoI interpreted this as meaning "it's obvious that it's wrong but since it's hard to directly connect with the victim the threshold for doing it is very low". I agree that it did come across a bit ambiguous as to his actual meaning. The perennial Simpsons quote "Shoplifting is a victimless crime...like punching someone in the dark" would've been a more direct illustration, at least if the author meant what I think he meant :)
- edster 17y agoHere is my best story about business consultants... I was contracting at a big three automaker and they had retained just such a firm, possibly even BCG, to "restructure" the IT department. So they had a team of overpaid consultants come and perform an analysis. I won't even get into the pointlessness of all that. However, the leader of the pack, the alpha male of the consulting team, would physically walk his laptop over to a printer near the admin's desk to print because the information was too sensitive to print over the network. In true hacker fashion a buddy and I had recently discovered that you could telnet into the printers and with a carefully crafted command actually set the text on the LCD readout on the printer itself. (The spot where is usually says "Load Paper") So we actually wrote a program that would allow us to send any text we wanted to any LCD of a printer. So of course, this self important consultant became our first victim of the prank. He hooked up his laptop and we starting sending text like "Loading Virus" to the LCD. It actually became a little frustrating because he wasn't noticing the LCD. Finally, he looked at the LCD and we starting sending text like "Downloading files from computer". This guy just went into an absolute panic and after the first few seconds of frantic inactivity he got his act together and closed the laptop. Of course, that didn't stop the printer from "Downloading files", so he finally ripped the cable from his laptop to sever the connection. He was in a panic for what I'm sure were some of the longest seconds of his life, but by then we were doubled over laughing just a couple of desks away and he caught on. I will give him credit for taking the joke well and he never tried to push it up the food chain or anything to involve any management.
- Uchikoma 17y agoThis relevant how?
- oz 17y agoStriking fear into the heart of a self-important consultant? Priceless!
- Hoff 17y agoWell, if you're looking for fodder for future fun and games, remind your mark that all sorts of interesting stuff can be recovered from the disks that are often resident inside mid- and upper-end printers. And remind your mark that printers actually can be infested with stuff; it's a good spot for malware to operate on a LAN, too.
- api 17y ago"I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual." WOW that is dead on. I get the feeling half the world is like that.
- tomjen3 17y agoThe problem is that it is not that simple, because just doing what others do works very well in most cases and you don't have the time to start questioning _everything_ - why do you shower in the morning? Why eat three times a day? I don't want to defend cargo-cults, but people copy because it works.
- api 17y agoNo, it's worse than that. I have seen this before. There is an entire portion of the business world that merely goes through the motions of being successful businesses rather than actually being businesses at all. It's really weird. You could look at it as investment fraud with plausible deniability. Take money, hire consultants, look busy. The only thing is, I don't think it's that explicit or intentional. I think there's a breed of person out there in the business world who does not grasp the distinction between actually doing something and imitating the appearance of doing it.
- duhprey 17y agoThere's always been something wrong, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, with the idea of getting a degree solely in "business"... I think I get it now. Reminds me of a shirt I saw somewhere from a cartoon I've never seen: "What's this? I'm going to go do some Science on it!" Seems very similar to: "I'm a business man"
- api 17y agoI could not agree more. Business is something you do with stuff, but you have to have stuff to do business about. Business is not something that can be done in a void. A lot of the fakers and cargo cultists are trying to do business about business to do business... they're not delivering any value because they don't know how.
- eplanit 17y agoI guess Welcome the Real World, is the best response I can give. So sorry that the real world is so non-idealistic and disappointing to you, and that your wonderful skills and knowledge aren't being prized and utilized. In other words, you're experiencing the reality shock _everybody_ experiences when engaging with, and learning about, the corporate world. It seems you'd be happier in Academia, a research institute, or perhaps creating something on your own.
- jmcannon 17y agoFine, but even then he does a wonderful and passionate job articulating that 'universal' reality shock.
- nir 17y agoIt's not the Real World, it's just a certain part of it. Not a small part, but not all of it either. There are a lot of places that offer a chance to do far more satisfying work. (BTW I'm not sure I'd recommend academe for someone with his mindset. The politics are perhaps even worse and the monetary gains much lower. A startup - even though far from the Disneyland some HN posts paint it as - could be a good place for someone like that)
- eplanit 17y agoYou're right. That youthful energy and talent are likely to be utilized best in a purely creative start-up. That was the idea with the creating something on his own suggestion.
- nextbigbuild 17y agoShould be required reading at every business school in America.
- regularfry 17y agoIsn't the "billion dollars destroyed" argument he makes just the broken window fallacy in reverse?
- devinj 17y agoIf by, "broken window fallacy in reverse" you mean "pointing out that the broken window fallacy is a fallacy", yes. He is troubled by the fact that he is earning money by breaking windows.
- tome 17y ago“Find me a rock” problems sound dead simple, but in actuality have requirements that are poorly stated or unknown. You never know what you’re looking for; you only know that you’ll know it when you see it. Even better perhaps: "you only know that someone else will know it when they see it".
- edo 17y agoWhat an amazingly insightful article. Props to the author for speaking up. Yet, slightly dissapointed that he did not leave out of his own accord, but waited to be laid off. In his own reasoning "I’ve come to the conclusion that having a father who can pay for a top-notch education outweighs the disadvantage of being raised by a hypocrite." Acting as if financial success equates to dishonesty. While in the very same piece the author praises free market, and money in exchange for true value does not compute. Does he believe, or not believe in the power of a free market, or has he come to develop a disbelief in honest trading?
- arethuza 17y agoI can recommend this book - it covers the same topics but is written by someone who spent decades in consulting rather than a few months: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-off-Scandalous-Management-Consulting-Machine/dp/1872188060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271069591&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-off-Scandalous-Management-Consul...
- chaostheory 17y agosounds like what I did at accenture
- c00p3r 17y agoIt's the same everywhere. For example, people who are reselling SAP in, say, Russia, are doing exactly the same thing - tuning numbers and telling lies. The better you're able to lie the better SAP consultant you are. There are no project with was completed on schedule and within budget.
- known 17y agoI think this is the reason why MBAs find it difficult become entrepreneurs.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoI had a job like that. I was supposed to use my analysis and creativity to build models for client forecasting, but if they didn't confirm what the brand team wanted to hear, they'd be rejected. It sucked. I was fresh out of school and cared more about getting the right answer than appeasing clients. I lasted 8 months in that job. No regrets about leaving. Also, $16k is piss-poor for a severance package in a brand-name consulting firm like BCG. Given the economy and the likelihood of a necessary career change, OP should have asked for 6 months' base (including COBRA) and an "office firing" (you're terminated but can use office resources for the job search and retain the right to represent yourself as employed).
- jeremytliles 17y agoI think I missed the part where he had the leverage to make that kind of demand. Perhaps even the brand-name consulting firms have figured out that ridiculous severance packages don't make a whole lot of sense.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoWhat I'm talking about isn't that ridiculous. Paying 6 months' salary is a small cost compared to the cost of a termination lawsuit or a negative article being written about the firm. I'm guessing they gave him 2 months pay and nothing for the move back, from Dubai (which is a dangerous place to lose your job, by the way). They also seem to have given him nothing in terms of exit counseling. To answer the question you raised: his article and the fact that it got published is the leverage he had. I bet it's circulating around BCG right now. It has the potential to be a morale and image problem, and not the Goldman Sachs style of image problem (where people hate GS but consider them good at what they do). There are rational reasons for firms to pay decent severance packages. It's not just something they do to be nice.
- yosho 17y agoIn college, I used to debate with myself on which career was better, ibanking or management consulting. In the end, I chose to pursue management consulting, which I've been doing for the last 2 years. Now, I debate with my friends on which career is worse, ibanking or consulting because frankly, after sifting through so much corporate BS, I've come to realize that all these jobs need to be prestigious in order to get ivy league grads to pursue them. In reality, we're either glorified excel junkies, or overpaid powerpoint formatters. I'm crossing my fingers now hoping that this start-up I'm working on takes off... I really do want to leave the corporate world for good. The realization that the preparation we had in college is absolutely useless in the real world, and that any semi-intelligent high-schooler could do our jobs is a depressing thought.
- barmstrong 17y agoHis description sounded about the same as my time doing consulting at Deloitte. It didn't leave me with a good impression of consultants.