4 ms·

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, an

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
- xrd 5y ago
  Can you share some examples of some net positive things McKinsey does? I generally hear the bad stuff?
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    I cannot share specifics of my work, which is unlikely to result in a satisfactory answer. So, sorry. I'll be blunt that most of it is tackling banal issues. Scrolling through our social impact report which includes the public stuff I found the highlights I thought were interesting. You can take this with a grain of salt and I don't tend to find these things super convincing for any company, but here: * Founded a non profit which has upskilled hundreds of thousands of medical workers * Did a lot of pro bono work (meaning "valuable" consulting work, but also the usual humble volunteer stuff) to keep food banks alive during covid * About $200M in pro bono work dedicated to improving racial equity and hosting a leadership program for black leaders * $2B in cash and support dedicated to social responsibility (I think this is mostly climate?) over the decade * Around 220,000 hours of pro bono consultant time over the year * Apparently we helped Khan Academy reach kids as things were going remote and TeachForIndia _____ And of course there's the not totally pro bono stuff which is just "nice problems to work on". Some people scoff at this because its paid for, and it is typically very expensive. But I'll list it it anyway: * COVID response for 35+ national governments and many smaller governments * Public Health * Economic and Social Development * Racial equity and diversity * Upskilling or reskilling workers who lost jobs * Lots of decarbonization and renewable energy stuff You can read if interested here: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/about%20us/social%20responsibility/2020%20social%20responsibility%20report/mckinsey-social-responsibility-report-2020.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/about%20us/social%... And again, many companies have stuff like this. I tend to think this is a bit better than average big co., but whatever, it doesn't hit my day to day. In my opinion the more down to earth impact that you might enjoy is just helping companies you like do better. If you like to help pharma, or renewables, or videogames, or... banks, you can do that. Which is just kind of good enough on its own. Unlike a job where you work within your little sphere within a big company, consulting lets you just tackle big problems with the big decision makers. idk, my experience has been largely positive. I'm happy to speak on its behalf. I know I could go work for Facebook and earn probably another $100k, but I feel pretty strongly that would be a lot less fulfilling. My view of the firm has maybe 50 people in it. It's a pretty flat org. And you have a clear line of what partners oversee your stuff. It was legit upsetting to hear about the ICE work during the trump admin for myself and many others, but at the same time it feels more like a separate subsidiary. Less like facebook where all rolls up to zuck. Like if you worked for ben and jerry's and something bad happened at dove. Both are owned by unilever. Is dove thus representative of all of unilever? Ehhh I don't think so. Example companies chose at random. tl;dr solving business problems you're interested in is simply a good business.
- moneywoes 5y ago
  What is the day to day like?
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Depends wildly on geography and group. For me Pre-covid, traveling to client sites sunday evening through thursday on about 80% of weeks. Avg day 10-12 hours with periods of harder hours, which can be a lot but is easier to do when you're going to a hotel with all of your food taken care of (compared to living at home and having responsibilities and a commute). Never worked weekends though. Most work happens in a group of ~3-7 people over months. New manager every time, but it's cool if you ask their previous teammembers if they were nice to work with before you commit to a new project. Things move fast. You usually come in with a mandate from the top to peel back red tape. A ton of meetings listening to people, synthesizing their inputs, and coming up with a plan on what to do about it. If you're on the tech / data analytics side, it'll be more of listening to how they accomplish X today, thinking about how it could be done smarter, and working with the client to come up with a basic model that does X better. Feedback culture is strong. It's very hard to do well if you're not actively part of the team. Maybe like... a bougy hackathon vibe.
Matticus_Rex 5y ago
The organizations where you can do the same work that aren't McKinsey (assuming you're in the strategic management consulting side) tend to not be much better than McKinsey on that front. You could go niche, but you might end up making half the money (or double, or both depending on the year).

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

xrd 5y ago
Can you share some examples of some net positive things McKinsey does? I generally hear the bad stuff?
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I cannot share specifics of my work, which is unlikely to result in a satisfactory answer. So, sorry. I'll be blunt that most of it is tackling banal issues. Scrolling through our social impact report which includes the public stuff I found the highlights I thought were interesting. You can take this with a grain of salt and I don't tend to find these things super convincing for any company, but here: * Founded a non profit which has upskilled hundreds of thousands of medical workers * Did a lot of pro bono work (meaning "valuable" consulting work, but also the usual humble volunteer stuff) to keep food banks alive during covid * About $200M in pro bono work dedicated to improving racial equity and hosting a leadership program for black leaders * $2B in cash and support dedicated to social responsibility (I think this is mostly climate?) over the decade * Around 220,000 hours of pro bono consultant time over the year * Apparently we helped Khan Academy reach kids as things were going remote and TeachForIndia _____ And of course there's the not totally pro bono stuff which is just "nice problems to work on". Some people scoff at this because its paid for, and it is typically very expensive. But I'll list it it anyway: * COVID response for 35+ national governments and many smaller governments * Public Health * Economic and Social Development * Racial equity and diversity * Upskilling or reskilling workers who lost jobs * Lots of decarbonization and renewable energy stuff You can read if interested here: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/about%20us/social%20responsibility/2020%20social%20responsibility%20report/mckinsey-social-responsibility-report-2020.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/about%20us/social%... And again, many companies have stuff like this. I tend to think this is a bit better than average big co., but whatever, it doesn't hit my day to day. In my opinion the more down to earth impact that you might enjoy is just helping companies you like do better. If you like to help pharma, or renewables, or videogames, or... banks, you can do that. Which is just kind of good enough on its own. Unlike a job where you work within your little sphere within a big company, consulting lets you just tackle big problems with the big decision makers. idk, my experience has been largely positive. I'm happy to speak on its behalf. I know I could go work for Facebook and earn probably another $100k, but I feel pretty strongly that would be a lot less fulfilling. My view of the firm has maybe 50 people in it. It's a pretty flat org. And you have a clear line of what partners oversee your stuff. It was legit upsetting to hear about the ICE work during the trump admin for myself and many others, but at the same time it feels more like a separate subsidiary. Less like facebook where all rolls up to zuck. Like if you worked for ben and jerry's and something bad happened at dove. Both are owned by unilever. Is dove thus representative of all of unilever? Ehhh I don't think so. Example companies chose at random. tl;dr solving business problems you're interested in is simply a good business.
moneywoes 5y ago
What is the day to day like?
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Depends wildly on geography and group. For me Pre-covid, traveling to client sites sunday evening through thursday on about 80% of weeks. Avg day 10-12 hours with periods of harder hours, which can be a lot but is easier to do when you're going to a hotel with all of your food taken care of (compared to living at home and having responsibilities and a commute). Never worked weekends though. Most work happens in a group of ~3-7 people over months. New manager every time, but it's cool if you ask their previous teammembers if they were nice to work with before you commit to a new project. Things move fast. You usually come in with a mandate from the top to peel back red tape. A ton of meetings listening to people, synthesizing their inputs, and coming up with a plan on what to do about it. If you're on the tech / data analytics side, it'll be more of listening to how they accomplish X today, thinking about how it could be done smarter, and working with the client to come up with a basic model that does X better. Feedback culture is strong. It's very hard to do well if you're not actively part of the team. Maybe like... a bougy hackathon vibe.

Matticus_Rex 5y ago

The organizations where you can do the same work that aren't McKinsey (assuming you're in the strategic management consulting side) tend to not be much better than McKinsey on that front. You could go niche, but you might end up making half the money (or double, or both depending on the year).