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Uh I don't know what management consultants you've met but as an industry it is the opposite of efficient. It's an industry that's built on stealing value from

Uh I don't know what management consultants you've met but as an industry it is the opposite of efficient. It's an industry that's built on stealing value from the productive bits of society by leveraging the social status of it's employees. Some software is certainly very efficient and productive but after many years in software I can tell you that a lot of software work is repeated broken window fixing. It's not about lazy / hardworking it's about those with social capital and those without. Those with it prosper and those without it flounder.

iammisc 5y ago
I used to be a management consultant, so I have a lot of experience and a lot of insider knowledge. Management consultants automate away the explanations a CEO or executive has to give. They can just point to their superiors and inferiors and say 'Bain said to do blah'. No one's going to get fired for buying Microsoft, or listening to McKinley. Inside the industry itself, the actual consulting is heavily automated. Consultants are mainly glorified data entry technicians, inputting numbers into pre-built models and using pre-made assets to assemble a good-looking presentation. There's some skill to it in terms of speaking, but the process is heavily automated to make it extremely efficient. It definitely saves the executives time, which is why they'd hire them. > Some software is certainly very efficient and productive but after many years in software I can tell you that a lot of software work is repeated broken window fixing. There is a common fallacy I see often when driving on the freeway during rush hour. Some people seem to believe that if they just took the surface streets, they would get to their destination faster. That is because they are spending more of their time moving on the surface streets, but on average they're still going slower than the freeway people. In short, they trade a large variance in a higher average speed on the freeway for a lower variance in a lower average speed on the roads. This analogy extends to hard work. Americans glorify the worker taking the surface streets -- i.e., the one actively "doing" something even if the amount of work being done per unit time is very small -- rather than the one in the stop-and-go traffic -- the architect who works two hours a day intensely, and then takes time off, or the SW engineer who works for 30 minute stretches and then rests to compile his software. In reality, the latter two get to their destination faster, even if it seems like they're doing nothing most of the time. For some reason, the steady work is valued more than the high acceleration/high deceleration work. That is to say you identify frustrations with software (repeated broken window fixing) which certainly exist, but they do not detract from the fact that the automaton enabled by software is still incredibly valuable. I don't see how this is even debatable. The increase in productivity directly attributable to software is undeniable. EDIT; I'll point out that I ran away from management consulting. I hated it, and I have little good to say about the industry. But it's undeniable they automate away the decisions of executives to the point people are willing to pay.

iammisc 5y ago

I used to be a management consultant, so I have a lot of experience and a lot of insider knowledge. Management consultants automate away the explanations a CEO or executive has to give. They can just point to their superiors and inferiors and say 'Bain said to do blah'. No one's going to get fired for buying Microsoft, or listening to McKinley. Inside the industry itself, the actual consulting is heavily automated. Consultants are mainly glorified data entry technicians, inputting numbers into pre-built models and using pre-made assets to assemble a good-looking presentation. There's some skill to it in terms of speaking, but the process is heavily automated to make it extremely efficient. It definitely saves the executives time, which is why they'd hire them. > Some software is certainly very efficient and productive but after many years in software I can tell you that a lot of software work is repeated broken window fixing. There is a common fallacy I see often when driving on the freeway during rush hour. Some people seem to believe that if they just took the surface streets, they would get to their destination faster. That is because they are spending more of their time moving on the surface streets, but on average they're still going slower than the freeway people. In short, they trade a large variance in a higher average speed on the freeway for a lower variance in a lower average speed on the roads. This analogy extends to hard work. Americans glorify the worker taking the surface streets -- i.e., the one actively "doing" something even if the amount of work being done per unit time is very small -- rather than the one in the stop-and-go traffic -- the architect who works two hours a day intensely, and then takes time off, or the SW engineer who works for 30 minute stretches and then rests to compile his software. In reality, the latter two get to their destination faster, even if it seems like they're doing nothing most of the time. For some reason, the steady work is valued more than the high acceleration/high deceleration work. That is to say you identify frustrations with software (repeated broken window fixing) which certainly exist, but they do not detract from the fact that the automaton enabled by software is still incredibly valuable. I don't see how this is even debatable. The increase in productivity directly attributable to software is undeniable. EDIT; I'll point out that I ran away from management consulting. I hated it, and I have little good to say about the industry. But it's undeniable they automate away the decisions of executives to the point people are willing to pay.