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If I see McKinsey on someone's resume, it's a huge red flag. Similar to "Head of marketing for children's sales at Phillip Morris". Sure, all companies do some

by tharne 5y ago

If I see McKinsey on someone's resume, it's a huge red flag. Similar to "Head of marketing for children's sales at Phillip Morris". Sure, all companies do some bad things, but the complete lack of ethics required to succeed at McKinsey is next-level.

buggythebug 5y ago
Is this anecdotal or is it well known?
- tharne 5y ago
  Anecdotal, based on personal experience with these folks
- IMTDb 5y ago
  Well known, based on personal experience with these folks. But most of the time, it's due to how these guys are managed by their client. When you bring in an individual from a top consulting firm, they will fight tooth and nail to get the results you want. Or at least not "fail" at getting those. If this means doing a great job, they will definitely do that. If - due to factors they can't really control - they need to endanger the rest of the project so that their part is successful, they will avoid to do it if they can. But they will do it if they need to. Failing is just not an option. This is the danger of hiring consultants: incentives are not fully aligned between you and them. You want the whole project to be successful - on the long run. They want their part to be successful - right now. If you are careful enough, these two absolutely coexist. If you aren't it can be dangerous for you whole organisation.
_dujt 5y ago
> If I see McKinsey on someone's resume, it's a huge red flag I can’t wait for the day when engineers from Facebook or Google are treated the same way after all the harm those companies have caused is revealed.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I work for McKinsey. In my opinion, the ethical costs of working for Facebook are far worse. In some way, if you work for facebook, you are supporting the product Facebook, which I find unethical. If you work for McKinsey, it's a decentralized org. You might not like that there's a team serving oil or cigarette or saudi clients, but the work you do won't have any bearing on them. You can work on helping clients in spaces that you think are good to serve and refuse to serve clients in spaces you don't. There's an element in that money goes to the top, enriching partners whose work you may disagreement. But... eh, I would say the flow of money is much less interesting than the individual impacts of my work. Am I enabling more work to be done in oil and cigarettes? In my opinion, not really. It's pretty cool to be able to turn down projects because you disagree with them ethically. I can't say I agree with the other doom and gloom posts that say everyone leaving hates the company. I would say the average employee leaves on positive terms.
  - burkaman 5y ago
    If you don't care about the money, couldn't you do the same work for an organization that doesn't work for Saudi Arabia? Job market is pretty good right now, and it's not like it's difficult to find a company that doesn't have seven chapters in its Wikipedia Controversies section.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      Money is pretty good. Probably less than tech equivalent. When I said I don't care about the money flow I meant I don't care if the work ultimately enriches people whose ethics I don't agree with in part. Short answer is I like my job. I like the work that I do. I think it directly helps the world be better. I get to operate at a very high level working with CEOs of important companies. The company is genuinely interested in advancing my career. It's a rare mix of tech and business. Coworkers are pleasant. Leadership is good and listens to its people. The controversies don't bother me that much. the firm is decentralized. It bothers me about as much being associated with American problems. On a whole I think the firm helps things more than it hurts. The same confidentiality rules prevent us from sharing our successes. ymmv
leroy_masochist 5y ago
That's interesting. On whose behalf are you reviewing resumes?
kevmo314 5y ago
If you're getting their resume, maybe they didn't succeed and they might have ethics :)
- short_sells_poo 5y ago
  I'd agree with you. Basically the way these companies work is that either you make partner in a specific timeframe, or you are encouraged to go elsewhere. Almost by definition, people who have a big consultancy on their resume did not make it to partner for one reason or another.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    Part of the business model is farming out “alumni” to lucrative management roles at large companies (usually clients) with the expectation they’ll turn around and engage the firm for even more consulting work.
  - wil421 5y ago
    Most people I know who worked for the Big 4 left because they were treated like dogs and worked endless hours. It’s not that they couldn’t make partner it’s that they didn’t want to. This applies to both the accounting and IT consulting practices. A few of the accounting people have very successful careers that pay much more than consulting, including being a CFO. A lot of others left for smaller consultancies where they are able to have a say in the company versus being a cog in the wheel. I’ve debated going to McKinsey or the Big 4 but I’m not traveling Sunday-Thursday. Smaller shops pay more. Speaking with other consultants I’ve found that working with medium sized Software Vendors means great benefits including sweet RSUs and they don’t travel as much.
- tharne 5y ago
  That's a good a point, and something I honestly hadn't thought of. They could be ethical folks who got sick of the BS.
  - burkaman 5y ago
boh 5y ago
Not sure what "next level" means. McKinsey is a consultant. If a company asks it to figure out how to make the world a better, happy place, it'll consult on that, but they don't. McKinsey has been used as an excuse for a host of evil activity but it's their clients that asked them to advise them and the clients that execute on the suggestions.
- wgj 5y ago
  It's a little bit like intent laundering, isn't it.
  - boh 5y ago
    Yes that's why they hire them. Often managers hire McKinsey to legitimize their own ideas and then use them as scapegoats if things go sideways. That's one of their main selling points.
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    Even in the benign case it usually intent laundering. Consultants are often brought in to deal with organizational inability to do something that a substantial chunk of the employees already knows they need to do. It is one of the reasons they can be successful hiring people straight from school and putting them on big accounts. The basic formula for many of these jobs is to interview employees, figure out the way forward that the sponsoring exec really wanted anyway in the form a synthesis of what the employees suggested, add some data and pretty graphs to a report, and then lend the idea external credibility (and future blamability if it fails).
- alistairSH 5y ago
  That sounds very close to "just following orders". Enabling evil is itself evil. Whether or not McKinsey is, when taken as a whole, evil is debatable. But, they certainly do enough work with dictators and other known bad actors that we should have the debate.
  - pempem 5y ago
    We should have that debate about every organization. McKinsey primarily (not exclusively) works with actors who have the ability to pay fees, and those tend to be actors in power. The number of organizations whose leaders have had intimate dealings with saudi arabia or other nation states with dictators at the helm would include most of our employers.
xadhominemx 5y ago
Seems like you are a mid-level technical person, no? So I doubt you’d ever see the resume of McKinsey consulting staff.
- burkaman 5y ago
  McKinsey has hundreds (thousands?) of software engineers and data scientists.
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    Sure but who really cares about back office staff in this context
    - burkaman 5y ago
      I had a CS professor in college who every year would give a speech about a hypothetical engineer designing pipe fittings that are eventually used in concentration camp gas chambers. The point is not that if something you make is used for evil that makes you a bad person, but that you should pay attention to the broader consequences of your work even if it appears innocuous, and if you find out it's being misused, do something about it. Quit or complain to your boss or tell the media or alter your design or something. I'm sorry to jump to Nazis, I know you're not supposed to do that on the internet. I'd like to explicitly state that I don't think McKinsey employees are as bad as Nazis. This comment just reminded me of that very valuable lesson in engineering ethics. In this case it's not really relevant - engineers on consulting projects are not "back office staff". They're part of the team, on site, in meetings, making decisions.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        Or you could work for IBM > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
      - nwatson 5y ago
        The "pipe fittings" reminds me of the first season of "Patriot", an Amazon Prime show whose first season was excellent, a spy/engineering thriller (I only watched the first two episodes of season two, not sure whether it's good or not, seemed weak by comparison). In any case, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5-9Rfrui9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5-9Rfrui9A "'Patriot' Piping Lingo, The McMillan Way (Amazon Prime)", where a seasoned CEO / engineer talks about pipe fittings at length. I'm sure software/devops engineers sound just as obtuse to those not familiar with software.
jollybean 5y ago
McKinsey is an interesting place, but I think this is very much the wrong take - and the headline is out of context. McKinsey is a conglomerate of silos, and it's entirely possible for McKinsey NY to be working on something that's related to something McKinsey Atlanta is working on - that doesn't make it a conflict of interest. In any more than banks advise and act for all sorts of clients who have related interests. There are reasons to maybe having Red Flags (or points of concern really) about McKinsey people but I don't think that this is generally it. I would hire everyone from McKinsey that I know if there were a role for them, and their 'integrity' wouldn't remotely be an issue. The issue frankly is how applicable their skills would be in most operational environments.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Except US government contracts have specific language requiring disclosure of conflicts. That Kinsey ignores this language and instead pays fines indicates both that Kinsey lacks some morals and also that the contract process with the US is broken (at minimum, the fines should be higher to discourage this behavior).
- teachrdan 5y ago
  It seems that you didn't even read three paragraphs into the article: "At times, McKinsey consultants helped those drugmaker clients fend off costly FDA oversight — even as McKinsey colleagues assigned to the FDA were working to bolster the agency’s regulation of the pharmaceutical market. In one instance, for example, McKinsey consultants helped Purdue and other opioid producers push the FDA to water down a proposed opioid-safety program. The opioid producer ultimately succeeded in weakening the program, even as overdose deaths mounted nationwide." McKinsey was actively helping opioid manufacturers minimize government oversight. The misconduct in question by McKinsey isn't hypothetical.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    You've provided evidence that supports my position. Different McKinsey teams were hired by different entities to do different things. To the extent that those teams are not related or coordinating, that's understandable and not a breach of ethics. An Accenture division can be helping to the IRS build tax compliance software while another division help companies write tax minimization software. There are only a small number of 'Big Accounting' firms, and they all have overlapping interests. Banks to similarly. McKinsey, Goldman, Accenture, all the big accounting firms are always working with 'Big Pharma' and 'Government' at the same time and all of the parties know this. While we do need to be wary and cautious about backchannel information passing etc. - the notion that there's a breach of public interest as it is being presented is hyperbole.

by tharne 5y ago

buggythebug 5y ago

Is this anecdotal or is it well known?

tharne 5y ago
Anecdotal, based on personal experience with these folks
IMTDb 5y ago
Well known, based on personal experience with these folks. But most of the time, it's due to how these guys are managed by their client. When you bring in an individual from a top consulting firm, they will fight tooth and nail to get the results you want. Or at least not "fail" at getting those. If this means doing a great job, they will definitely do that. If - due to factors they can't really control - they need to endanger the rest of the project so that their part is successful, they will avoid to do it if they can. But they will do it if they need to. Failing is just not an option. This is the danger of hiring consultants: incentives are not fully aligned between you and them. You want the whole project to be successful - on the long run. They want their part to be successful - right now. If you are careful enough, these two absolutely coexist. If you aren't it can be dangerous for you whole organisation.

_dujt 5y ago

> If I see McKinsey on someone's resume, it's a huge red flag I can’t wait for the day when engineers from Facebook or Google are treated the same way after all the harm those companies have caused is revealed.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
I work for McKinsey. In my opinion, the ethical costs of working for Facebook are far worse. In some way, if you work for facebook, you are supporting the product Facebook, which I find unethical. If you work for McKinsey, it's a decentralized org. You might not like that there's a team serving oil or cigarette or saudi clients, but the work you do won't have any bearing on them. You can work on helping clients in spaces that you think are good to serve and refuse to serve clients in spaces you don't. There's an element in that money goes to the top, enriching partners whose work you may disagreement. But... eh, I would say the flow of money is much less interesting than the individual impacts of my work. Am I enabling more work to be done in oil and cigarettes? In my opinion, not really. It's pretty cool to be able to turn down projects because you disagree with them ethically. I can't say I agree with the other doom and gloom posts that say everyone leaving hates the company. I would say the average employee leaves on positive terms.
- burkaman 5y ago
  If you don't care about the money, couldn't you do the same work for an organization that doesn't work for Saudi Arabia? Job market is pretty good right now, and it's not like it's difficult to find a company that doesn't have seven chapters in its Wikipedia Controversies section.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Money is pretty good. Probably less than tech equivalent. When I said I don't care about the money flow I meant I don't care if the work ultimately enriches people whose ethics I don't agree with in part. Short answer is I like my job. I like the work that I do. I think it directly helps the world be better. I get to operate at a very high level working with CEOs of important companies. The company is genuinely interested in advancing my career. It's a rare mix of tech and business. Coworkers are pleasant. Leadership is good and listens to its people. The controversies don't bother me that much. the firm is decentralized. It bothers me about as much being associated with American problems. On a whole I think the firm helps things more than it hurts. The same confidentiality rules prevent us from sharing our successes. ymmv

leroy_masochist 5y ago

That's interesting. On whose behalf are you reviewing resumes?

kevmo314 5y ago

If you're getting their resume, maybe they didn't succeed and they might have ethics :)

short_sells_poo 5y ago
I'd agree with you. Basically the way these companies work is that either you make partner in a specific timeframe, or you are encouraged to go elsewhere. Almost by definition, people who have a big consultancy on their resume did not make it to partner for one reason or another.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Part of the business model is farming out “alumni” to lucrative management roles at large companies (usually clients) with the expectation they’ll turn around and engage the firm for even more consulting work.
- wil421 5y ago
  Most people I know who worked for the Big 4 left because they were treated like dogs and worked endless hours. It’s not that they couldn’t make partner it’s that they didn’t want to. This applies to both the accounting and IT consulting practices. A few of the accounting people have very successful careers that pay much more than consulting, including being a CFO. A lot of others left for smaller consultancies where they are able to have a say in the company versus being a cog in the wheel. I’ve debated going to McKinsey or the Big 4 but I’m not traveling Sunday-Thursday. Smaller shops pay more. Speaking with other consultants I’ve found that working with medium sized Software Vendors means great benefits including sweet RSUs and they don’t travel as much.
tharne 5y ago
That's a good a point, and something I honestly hadn't thought of. They could be ethical folks who got sick of the BS.
- burkaman 5y ago

boh 5y ago

Not sure what "next level" means. McKinsey is a consultant. If a company asks it to figure out how to make the world a better, happy place, it'll consult on that, but they don't. McKinsey has been used as an excuse for a host of evil activity but it's their clients that asked them to advise them and the clients that execute on the suggestions.

wgj 5y ago
It's a little bit like intent laundering, isn't it.
- boh 5y ago
  Yes that's why they hire them. Often managers hire McKinsey to legitimize their own ideas and then use them as scapegoats if things go sideways. That's one of their main selling points.
- jacobr1 5y ago
  Even in the benign case it usually intent laundering. Consultants are often brought in to deal with organizational inability to do something that a substantial chunk of the employees already knows they need to do. It is one of the reasons they can be successful hiring people straight from school and putting them on big accounts. The basic formula for many of these jobs is to interview employees, figure out the way forward that the sponsoring exec really wanted anyway in the form a synthesis of what the employees suggested, add some data and pretty graphs to a report, and then lend the idea external credibility (and future blamability if it fails).
alistairSH 5y ago
That sounds very close to "just following orders". Enabling evil is itself evil. Whether or not McKinsey is, when taken as a whole, evil is debatable. But, they certainly do enough work with dictators and other known bad actors that we should have the debate.
- pempem 5y ago
  We should have that debate about every organization. McKinsey primarily (not exclusively) works with actors who have the ability to pay fees, and those tend to be actors in power. The number of organizations whose leaders have had intimate dealings with saudi arabia or other nation states with dictators at the helm would include most of our employers.

xadhominemx 5y ago

Seems like you are a mid-level technical person, no? So I doubt you’d ever see the resume of McKinsey consulting staff.

burkaman 5y ago
McKinsey has hundreds (thousands?) of software engineers and data scientists.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  Sure but who really cares about back office staff in this context
  - burkaman 5y ago
    I had a CS professor in college who every year would give a speech about a hypothetical engineer designing pipe fittings that are eventually used in concentration camp gas chambers. The point is not that if something you make is used for evil that makes you a bad person, but that you should pay attention to the broader consequences of your work even if it appears innocuous, and if you find out it's being misused, do something about it. Quit or complain to your boss or tell the media or alter your design or something. I'm sorry to jump to Nazis, I know you're not supposed to do that on the internet. I'd like to explicitly state that I don't think McKinsey employees are as bad as Nazis. This comment just reminded me of that very valuable lesson in engineering ethics. In this case it's not really relevant - engineers on consulting projects are not "back office staff". They're part of the team, on site, in meetings, making decisions.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      Or you could work for IBM > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
    - nwatson 5y ago
      The "pipe fittings" reminds me of the first season of "Patriot", an Amazon Prime show whose first season was excellent, a spy/engineering thriller (I only watched the first two episodes of season two, not sure whether it's good or not, seemed weak by comparison). In any case, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5-9Rfrui9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5-9Rfrui9A "'Patriot' Piping Lingo, The McMillan Way (Amazon Prime)", where a seasoned CEO / engineer talks about pipe fittings at length. I'm sure software/devops engineers sound just as obtuse to those not familiar with software.

jollybean 5y ago

McKinsey is an interesting place, but I think this is very much the wrong take - and the headline is out of context. McKinsey is a conglomerate of silos, and it's entirely possible for McKinsey NY to be working on something that's related to something McKinsey Atlanta is working on - that doesn't make it a conflict of interest. In any more than banks advise and act for all sorts of clients who have related interests. There are reasons to maybe having Red Flags (or points of concern really) about McKinsey people but I don't think that this is generally it. I would hire everyone from McKinsey that I know if there were a role for them, and their 'integrity' wouldn't remotely be an issue. The issue frankly is how applicable their skills would be in most operational environments.

alistairSH 5y ago
Except US government contracts have specific language requiring disclosure of conflicts. That Kinsey ignores this language and instead pays fines indicates both that Kinsey lacks some morals and also that the contract process with the US is broken (at minimum, the fines should be higher to discourage this behavior).
teachrdan 5y ago
It seems that you didn't even read three paragraphs into the article: "At times, McKinsey consultants helped those drugmaker clients fend off costly FDA oversight — even as McKinsey colleagues assigned to the FDA were working to bolster the agency’s regulation of the pharmaceutical market. In one instance, for example, McKinsey consultants helped Purdue and other opioid producers push the FDA to water down a proposed opioid-safety program. The opioid producer ultimately succeeded in weakening the program, even as overdose deaths mounted nationwide." McKinsey was actively helping opioid manufacturers minimize government oversight. The misconduct in question by McKinsey isn't hypothetical.
- jollybean 5y ago
  You've provided evidence that supports my position. Different McKinsey teams were hired by different entities to do different things. To the extent that those teams are not related or coordinating, that's understandable and not a breach of ethics. An Accenture division can be helping to the IRS build tax compliance software while another division help companies write tax minimization software. There are only a small number of 'Big Accounting' firms, and they all have overlapping interests. Banks to similarly. McKinsey, Goldman, Accenture, all the big accounting firms are always working with 'Big Pharma' and 'Government' at the same time and all of the parties know this. While we do need to be wary and cautious about backchannel information passing etc. - the notion that there's a breach of public interest as it is being presented is hyperbole.