7 ms·

Well, first of all let's just make clear that it's not like BCG was paying him $16k hush money because his story is amazing. They pay everyone a $16k bonus on

Well, first of all let's just make clear that it's not like BCG was paying him $16k hush money because his story is amazing. They pay everyone a $16k bonus on the way out for signing that thing, whether people who have a gripe or others who have only good things to say. It doesn't somehow give him credibility. Aside from that, there are people who go into consulting and gain a lot of skills, and others who do the least work possible and leave. Some who find great fulfillment in the right corners of the work, some who find it totally dispiriting. This is just one person's experience, not a salacious tell-all about the "dark underbelly of an industry that no one wants to talk about".

greesil 5y ago
What skills do people learn when consulting?
- antisthenes 5y ago
  Nodding your head at whatever is being said, presumably.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  Assuming you're not being facetious... Business modelling, market research, actual understanding of how businesses operate (hint: it's not code), distilling large quantities of information into useful insights, communicating effectively with professionals, presenting to executive stakeholders, entry-level industry knowledge in a variety of industries, collaborating with people from different backgrounds & in widely different roles, (occasionally) finding potential solutions to business problems (again, code rarely solves much), selling ideas to stakeholders, being likable enough that people want to work with you.
  - greesil 5y ago
    Half facetious. The being likeable skill seems transferable. I'm sure it takes skill to do it well, but it's not my cup of tea.
  - scarmig 5y ago
    You left out making PowerPoint slides.
    - pantulis 5y ago
      Of course, but that's only the deployment process for the deliverable. An art on itself but the value is on the problem solving. What I admire from the McK/BCG/BAIN etc. cadre is their confidence on being able to solve any problem you can throw at them. Of course this does not always work, but the attitude is a mixture between hard-work, power, arrogance and being extremely smart people.
      - refurb 5y ago
        The fresh out of undergrad associate probably isn’t going to fix your company, but the partner who has done 15 years of consulting and probably some leadership stints at clients will probably have something worthwhile hearing. Consultants aren’t superheros. But if you’re looking for some smart people to grind on some question you have you they typically deliver what you want. Sometimes they crash and burn (had that happen with McK once).
      - stevesimmons 5y ago
        Plus the consultants working with clients have support from: * The partners overseeing the client relationships, who have each worked with hundreds of clients, been involved with a thousand projects personally, and know something of 10x more. At that stage in their career, a huge amount of strategy consulting becomes instinctive pattern recognition. * The firm's global knowledgebase, practice areas, research support teams, etc. These hugely accelerate your knowledge of an industry so you can productively and usefully engage with experienced managers at the client right from day 1. I was a BCG consultant for a few years. Every 3 months, I'd be thrown into a totally new industry: forestry and paper making, clothing supply chains, retail banking sales incentive structures, car tyre manufacturing cost reduction, airline route pricing, production planning for brick manufacturing, ERP systems for electrical contracting wholesaling. Those were my first two years as a junior consultant. On the day the project kicked off internally, of course I knew nothing. But a couple of days later, I knew how each industry worked, understood the competitive positions of the client and their main competitors, had some good hypotheses on the client's specific challenges, knew the terminology, and was fully equipped to start asking relevant questions. I never pretended to know stuff that I didn't. Being humble, open, inquisitive, sensitive to others' perspective, and focused on the outcome gets you a long way.
  - ryanhuff 5y ago
    Basically, you learn as somebody pays you to do a job they assumed you already knew how to do.
    - MagnumOpus 5y ago
      It's reflected in the rates. The McK engagement manager who is a veteran and knows their job (and your job as CEO/CFO/VP) charges $10k per day, because they are basically an experienced executive for hire -- while the McK associate fresh from business school gets leased out for $1k per day. The latter are the equivalent of a smart but inexperienced freelance developer (who don't cost much less) -- though with the resources of McK corporate behind them, and the willingess to work 14 hours a day.
      - thowawaybcg1 5y ago
        This guy knows. Unlike in other high paying professions, from day 1 in consulting you're dealing with C-level people. You learn how they think, how they talk, how they make decisions. Learning to consistently convince people in power is a pretty nice skill to have IMO. I think we're good at it if you believe from posts here at HN all we do is providing useless PPTs, and still growing double digits % each year while charging $2M for a 12w project.
- whymauri 5y ago
  How to make a variety of 2x2 matrices that make your clients happy. I've seen some really creative axes on those things -- it's an art.
- supernova87a 5y ago
  I think one of the most notable things is learning how to talk and to think in clear (and effective) ways, even if unfortunately sometimes it's employed in a way that comes off as low in content or expertise. It's about understanding how to organize thoughts and present a point in a way that an executive would want to make a decision on a topic. (When it goes the way it should.) After a stint in consulting, you sometimes have meetings with people you work with up and down the chain in a company, and you wonder, "my god, how do you get through every day with the disorganized jumble of random thoughts you're spewing in this meeting?" At its best, it teaches you how to find and organize evidence to make a point, convince people of something, and get things done. At worst, well... those skills can be employed by people robotically going to create meaningless (or harmful) advice that a company already knows, for lots of $$$ wasted. Like so much else, it is often a reflection of the capability and state of the person paying for the work. You get someone who's under lots of deadline pressures, dug themselves into a bad budget hole, doesn't know what good work looks like, and you're gonna get a shitty consulting output that makes the headlines (or makes people remember) that consultants can produce lots of BS.
  - wuschel 5y ago
    Hi, have you been working in a management/strategy consultancy? If yes, would you be up for a chat / email exchange? My contact details are in my profile. Cheers!
  - refurb 5y ago
    This is actually a great point. You’ll encounter company that ask “Why are my sales falling?” when you ask what they’ve looked at so far it’s often a handful of stab-in-the-dark strategies with no coordination or logic to the approach. Even just helping a company come up with a rationale plan to identify key issues and succinctly communicate that to leadership is a huge benefit.
andy9775 5y ago
> Aside from that, there are people who go into consulting and gain a lot of skills If what the author claims is true and consulting is basically making up numbers to fit some conclusion and general fluff work, I'm not sure that's a valuable skill to pick up. Sure, you could pick up networking and ...?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kbenson 5y ago
  There's all types of consulting at all levels. I worked for years at a small IT consulting company owned by my brother where we worked to fill the gap of companies that couldn't afford to hire more than a single "IT guy" (or anyone at all) to supplement their needs. We had plenty of good relationships with IT people at companies we worked with. We did everything from AD admin to a few Linux servers to full HA deployments and custom internal webapp development. It all depends on what you're offering and what the customer needs. We wanted long term contracts, so it was always in our best interest to provide a good solution. If companies outgrew us and wanted to insource IT, we would document and hand over what we managed, because to do otherwise not only would be a dick move, but it would kill our reputation. I imagine it's much different for a big name firm that never gets called out on doing a shit job because that would cast decision making of the executives that called upon them I to question.
  - fakedang 5y ago
    You're talking about IT consulting, while parent is talking about strategy/management consulting. Very different types with very different outcomes altogether.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      I think they were conflated farther up thread, not initially by me. >>> Aside from that, there are people who go into consulting and gain a lot of skills, and others who do the least work possible and leave. Some who find great fulfillment in the right corners of the work, some who find it totally dispiriting. So I don't think it's entirely obvious which type of consulting was being discussed at the point I replied. Even so, I'm not sure the type matter as much as might be thought, I'm positive there are management consultants that bring useful knowledge and real benefits to the table. I think the incentive alignments make that harder, because of some of the same reasons I noted previously, but I don't think the type of consulting really matters, other than one type or the other being more common at different levels.
slantaclaus 5y ago
You sound like a BCG insider!
- maybelsyrup 5y ago
  Came here to say this
- supernova87a 5y ago
  No but I know pretty well how they work.
jamesgreenleaf 5y ago
You're right, but in a way that makes the act even worse. > They're not paying him hush money because he has a great story. > They simply pay everyone hush money as a matter of course.
- mathattack 5y ago
  Most companies pay you to sign a non disclosure on the way out.
  - virtue3 5y ago
    every company does this roughly. It's really funny when they aren't giving you any severance and they expect you to sign that stuff tho :3
    - jiofih 5y ago
      What industry do you work in?
      - virtue3 5y ago
        tech? to clarify: you generally aren't getting severance without signing something that loosely says you wont badmouth them.
  - worker767424 5y ago
    Non-disclosure is on the way in. Non-disparagement is on the way out. Feel free to skip signing things on your way out, especially if it's involuntary. On getting fired... It's usually an unplanned meeting shortly after you get in, possibly with HR present. Take a deep breath, and realize the decision has been made, and no amount of explanations, excuses, circumstances, or bargaining will change it. Keep your mouth shut. Don't bother asking them why; they won't say, and then you'll start guessing. There's nothing you can say that will help you. Don't sign anything; say you'll take home whatever documents they give you to review. Don't help them pick up your work where you left off--you don't work there, they made it clear they have no interest in you working there. Take all your personal belongings, return theirs. If they let you send a farewell email, send something generic (or not at all). As always HR is not your friend. In short, keep every interaction as curt as respectfully possible. It minimizes professional impact, and if something leads you to legal action, it puts you in the best position for it.
cortesoft 5y ago
I don’t think the point of the article to imply the entire consulting industry is like this. I would imagine there are markets for both consultants to actually advise and consultants to provide support for already made decisions. I think it would be just as naive to believe all consultants are scams as it would be to say all consultants are impartial professionals.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kumarvvr 5y ago
So, even BCG knows its a systemic issue.
Mauricebranagh 5y ago
Its a very common thing in US companies and the big 4 in the UK even for normal non redundancy leavers - does seem odd almost like the Company is admitting guilt. In a redundancy case I might say well then provide me will all the paperwork you have on file I will get my lawyer fried to check this over or we can sign the compromise agreement now for lets say 4 months salary. And also the comment right about the "unnerving culture" is a bit of a red flag.
- refurb 5y ago
  Not sure about the UK, but in the US consulting has a lifecycle. Very few hires stick it out for more than a few years. But that’s a feature not a bug. It’s not unusual for the Big 3 to help find you a job at a client. And why not? Now they have a lead for new work at the client. And the anti-disparagement makes sure when you’re talking to coworkers at your new job you talk about how great your time was and pass any interested candidates back to your old firm as new hires. Again, now the consulting firm has another contact at the client to help drum up business.

greesil 5y ago

What skills do people learn when consulting?

antisthenes 5y ago
Nodding your head at whatever is being said, presumably.
mdorazio 5y ago
Assuming you're not being facetious... Business modelling, market research, actual understanding of how businesses operate (hint: it's not code), distilling large quantities of information into useful insights, communicating effectively with professionals, presenting to executive stakeholders, entry-level industry knowledge in a variety of industries, collaborating with people from different backgrounds & in widely different roles, (occasionally) finding potential solutions to business problems (again, code rarely solves much), selling ideas to stakeholders, being likable enough that people want to work with you.
- greesil 5y ago
  Half facetious. The being likeable skill seems transferable. I'm sure it takes skill to do it well, but it's not my cup of tea.
- scarmig 5y ago
  You left out making PowerPoint slides.
  - pantulis 5y ago
    Of course, but that's only the deployment process for the deliverable. An art on itself but the value is on the problem solving. What I admire from the McK/BCG/BAIN etc. cadre is their confidence on being able to solve any problem you can throw at them. Of course this does not always work, but the attitude is a mixture between hard-work, power, arrogance and being extremely smart people.
    - refurb 5y ago
      The fresh out of undergrad associate probably isn’t going to fix your company, but the partner who has done 15 years of consulting and probably some leadership stints at clients will probably have something worthwhile hearing. Consultants aren’t superheros. But if you’re looking for some smart people to grind on some question you have you they typically deliver what you want. Sometimes they crash and burn (had that happen with McK once).
    - stevesimmons 5y ago
      Plus the consultants working with clients have support from: * The partners overseeing the client relationships, who have each worked with hundreds of clients, been involved with a thousand projects personally, and know something of 10x more. At that stage in their career, a huge amount of strategy consulting becomes instinctive pattern recognition. * The firm's global knowledgebase, practice areas, research support teams, etc. These hugely accelerate your knowledge of an industry so you can productively and usefully engage with experienced managers at the client right from day 1. I was a BCG consultant for a few years. Every 3 months, I'd be thrown into a totally new industry: forestry and paper making, clothing supply chains, retail banking sales incentive structures, car tyre manufacturing cost reduction, airline route pricing, production planning for brick manufacturing, ERP systems for electrical contracting wholesaling. Those were my first two years as a junior consultant. On the day the project kicked off internally, of course I knew nothing. But a couple of days later, I knew how each industry worked, understood the competitive positions of the client and their main competitors, had some good hypotheses on the client's specific challenges, knew the terminology, and was fully equipped to start asking relevant questions. I never pretended to know stuff that I didn't. Being humble, open, inquisitive, sensitive to others' perspective, and focused on the outcome gets you a long way.
- ryanhuff 5y ago
  Basically, you learn as somebody pays you to do a job they assumed you already knew how to do.
  - MagnumOpus 5y ago
    It's reflected in the rates. The McK engagement manager who is a veteran and knows their job (and your job as CEO/CFO/VP) charges $10k per day, because they are basically an experienced executive for hire -- while the McK associate fresh from business school gets leased out for $1k per day. The latter are the equivalent of a smart but inexperienced freelance developer (who don't cost much less) -- though with the resources of McK corporate behind them, and the willingess to work 14 hours a day.
    - thowawaybcg1 5y ago
      This guy knows. Unlike in other high paying professions, from day 1 in consulting you're dealing with C-level people. You learn how they think, how they talk, how they make decisions. Learning to consistently convince people in power is a pretty nice skill to have IMO. I think we're good at it if you believe from posts here at HN all we do is providing useless PPTs, and still growing double digits % each year while charging $2M for a 12w project.
whymauri 5y ago
How to make a variety of 2x2 matrices that make your clients happy. I've seen some really creative axes on those things -- it's an art.
supernova87a 5y ago
I think one of the most notable things is learning how to talk and to think in clear (and effective) ways, even if unfortunately sometimes it's employed in a way that comes off as low in content or expertise. It's about understanding how to organize thoughts and present a point in a way that an executive would want to make a decision on a topic. (When it goes the way it should.) After a stint in consulting, you sometimes have meetings with people you work with up and down the chain in a company, and you wonder, "my god, how do you get through every day with the disorganized jumble of random thoughts you're spewing in this meeting?" At its best, it teaches you how to find and organize evidence to make a point, convince people of something, and get things done. At worst, well... those skills can be employed by people robotically going to create meaningless (or harmful) advice that a company already knows, for lots of $$$ wasted. Like so much else, it is often a reflection of the capability and state of the person paying for the work. You get someone who's under lots of deadline pressures, dug themselves into a bad budget hole, doesn't know what good work looks like, and you're gonna get a shitty consulting output that makes the headlines (or makes people remember) that consultants can produce lots of BS.
- wuschel 5y ago
  Hi, have you been working in a management/strategy consultancy? If yes, would you be up for a chat / email exchange? My contact details are in my profile. Cheers!
- refurb 5y ago
  This is actually a great point. You’ll encounter company that ask “Why are my sales falling?” when you ask what they’ve looked at so far it’s often a handful of stab-in-the-dark strategies with no coordination or logic to the approach. Even just helping a company come up with a rationale plan to identify key issues and succinctly communicate that to leadership is a huge benefit.

andy9775 5y ago

> Aside from that, there are people who go into consulting and gain a lot of skills If what the author claims is true and consulting is basically making up numbers to fit some conclusion and general fluff work, I'm not sure that's a valuable skill to pick up. Sure, you could pick up networking and ...?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kbenson 5y ago
There's all types of consulting at all levels. I worked for years at a small IT consulting company owned by my brother where we worked to fill the gap of companies that couldn't afford to hire more than a single "IT guy" (or anyone at all) to supplement their needs. We had plenty of good relationships with IT people at companies we worked with. We did everything from AD admin to a few Linux servers to full HA deployments and custom internal webapp development. It all depends on what you're offering and what the customer needs. We wanted long term contracts, so it was always in our best interest to provide a good solution. If companies outgrew us and wanted to insource IT, we would document and hand over what we managed, because to do otherwise not only would be a dick move, but it would kill our reputation. I imagine it's much different for a big name firm that never gets called out on doing a shit job because that would cast decision making of the executives that called upon them I to question.
- fakedang 5y ago
  You're talking about IT consulting, while parent is talking about strategy/management consulting. Very different types with very different outcomes altogether.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    I think they were conflated farther up thread, not initially by me. >>> Aside from that, there are people who go into consulting and gain a lot of skills, and others who do the least work possible and leave. Some who find great fulfillment in the right corners of the work, some who find it totally dispiriting. So I don't think it's entirely obvious which type of consulting was being discussed at the point I replied. Even so, I'm not sure the type matter as much as might be thought, I'm positive there are management consultants that bring useful knowledge and real benefits to the table. I think the incentive alignments make that harder, because of some of the same reasons I noted previously, but I don't think the type of consulting really matters, other than one type or the other being more common at different levels.

slantaclaus 5y ago

You sound like a BCG insider!

maybelsyrup 5y ago
Came here to say this
supernova87a 5y ago
No but I know pretty well how they work.

jamesgreenleaf 5y ago

You're right, but in a way that makes the act even worse. > They're not paying him hush money because he has a great story. > They simply pay everyone hush money as a matter of course.

mathattack 5y ago
Most companies pay you to sign a non disclosure on the way out.
- virtue3 5y ago
  every company does this roughly. It's really funny when they aren't giving you any severance and they expect you to sign that stuff tho :3
  - jiofih 5y ago
    What industry do you work in?
    - virtue3 5y ago
      tech? to clarify: you generally aren't getting severance without signing something that loosely says you wont badmouth them.
- worker767424 5y ago
  Non-disclosure is on the way in. Non-disparagement is on the way out. Feel free to skip signing things on your way out, especially if it's involuntary. On getting fired... It's usually an unplanned meeting shortly after you get in, possibly with HR present. Take a deep breath, and realize the decision has been made, and no amount of explanations, excuses, circumstances, or bargaining will change it. Keep your mouth shut. Don't bother asking them why; they won't say, and then you'll start guessing. There's nothing you can say that will help you. Don't sign anything; say you'll take home whatever documents they give you to review. Don't help them pick up your work where you left off--you don't work there, they made it clear they have no interest in you working there. Take all your personal belongings, return theirs. If they let you send a farewell email, send something generic (or not at all). As always HR is not your friend. In short, keep every interaction as curt as respectfully possible. It minimizes professional impact, and if something leads you to legal action, it puts you in the best position for it.

cortesoft 5y ago

I don’t think the point of the article to imply the entire consulting industry is like this. I would imagine there are markets for both consultants to actually advise and consultants to provide support for already made decisions. I think it would be just as naive to believe all consultants are scams as it would be to say all consultants are impartial professionals.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kumarvvr 5y ago

So, even BCG knows its a systemic issue.

Mauricebranagh 5y ago

Its a very common thing in US companies and the big 4 in the UK even for normal non redundancy leavers - does seem odd almost like the Company is admitting guilt. In a redundancy case I might say well then provide me will all the paperwork you have on file I will get my lawyer fried to check this over or we can sign the compromise agreement now for lets say 4 months salary. And also the comment right about the "unnerving culture" is a bit of a red flag.

refurb 5y ago
Not sure about the UK, but in the US consulting has a lifecycle. Very few hires stick it out for more than a few years. But that’s a feature not a bug. It’s not unusual for the Big 3 to help find you a job at a client. And why not? Now they have a lead for new work at the client. And the anti-disparagement makes sure when you’re talking to coworkers at your new job you talk about how great your time was and pass any interested candidates back to your old firm as new hires. Again, now the consulting firm has another contact at the client to help drum up business.