I worked as a management consultant. When my firm billed my time out at ~$10K/day and paid me ~$150K/yr (a ratio of ~20:1), I didn't feel exploited. That ~$10K/

I worked as a management consultant. When my firm billed my time out at ~$10K/day and paid me ~$150K/yr (a ratio of ~20:1), I didn't feel exploited. That ~$10K/day covered way more than just my time. Here's what that billing had to cover: * My normal work hours [the thing we billed for] * My overtime hours * My annual bonus * My benefits & retirement savings & overhead & employer-side taxes * My time spent on business development & sales (most of which don't pan out) * My time spent on discounted or free projects performed to seed future sales * My time spent in training & development (probably ~4 weeks in the first year) * The time of managers spent training & developing me * My support staff (industry analysts, Powerpoint designers, internal experts) * Multi-million-dollar IT investments to build tools and databases to support me in my work * A couple first-class flights a week * A few nights a week at expensive hotels * Lyfts & Ubers everywhere * All meals expensed * The firm's partners working the case * New employees for whom we don't bill * Fees for market reports * Fees for expert interviews with industry executives (in some cases we'd do dozens of interviews a week, paying ~$1K/hr each) * Office overhead (rent, power, insurance, etc.) * Office support staff (HR, finance, janitors, etc.) * Profits for the firm's equity holders (Now a few of these expenses were billed separately I believe, but it shows the wide breadth of costs that a firm has to cover.) None of this opportunity would have existed without the firm, the network, the brand, and the partners. It's amazing to think that all I had to do was show up and work, and in exchange, I would get paid a high salary, get experience working with senior executives, get a prestigious brand on my resume, and accelerate my career relative to most career tracks. I don't regret the job, nor do I think it's surprising that there are crowds knocking on the door trying to get in. Looking at other industries, I wouldn't be surprised if a cashier at a grocery store made less than 5% of what they put in the register each day. And I wouldn't be surprised if a oil driller got paid 5% of oil that they extracted each day. Even if we're the ones touching the revenue, we're still a small part of what it takes to run a big business.