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> They are, in the end, selling the labor of clever and well-credentialed but woefully inexperienced people at really eye-popping rates. You'd think any well-ru

> They are, in the end, selling the labor of clever and well-credentialed but woefully inexperienced people at really eye-popping rates. You'd think any well-run company could get the same sort of insight from its own people. You'd be thinking wrong. Companies hire consulting firms _because_ they can't get the same types of insights from their own people... mainly due to the fact that their people have jobs doing other things and can't stop to spend a few months doing nothing but research. Also sensing some bias here: consulting firms work in teams with a mixture of new graduates and people with "deep industry experience and consequent insight" in order to provide a mix of expertise and exposure to new technologies/techniques coming from academia. If your experience with consultants was as a line employee or middle manager, you likely interacted only with the new grads from the team because they do most basic research and interviewing, so be aware that there may have been more experienced people on the engagement.

ghaff 8y ago
The one time I worked with a management consulting outfit, the team had a very sharp partner, a fairly inexperienced but sharp associate, and another associate who... wasn't so sharp. I wouldn't overestimate the value of the dedicated research they do. In my experience, the research was mostly interviewing and getting educated about a market and technology that the product managers, etc. were already familiar with. It felt like sort of a waste of money but it did validate pretty much what we were doing anyway. They created some elaborate financial model which was fairly useless but which was the sort of thing internal business staff liked. Net net. It was probably useful from an internal political perspective (which is always a consideration) even if it didn't deliver any particularly novel insights.

ghaff 8y ago

The one time I worked with a management consulting outfit, the team had a very sharp partner, a fairly inexperienced but sharp associate, and another associate who... wasn't so sharp. I wouldn't overestimate the value of the dedicated research they do. In my experience, the research was mostly interviewing and getting educated about a market and technology that the product managers, etc. were already familiar with. It felt like sort of a waste of money but it did validate pretty much what we were doing anyway. They created some elaborate financial model which was fairly useless but which was the sort of thing internal business staff liked. Net net. It was probably useful from an internal political perspective (which is always a consideration) even if it didn't deliver any particularly novel insights.