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As someone with firsthand experience at a “top” consulting firm this article is pretty accurate, albeit with a definite negative slant. A couple parts that real

As someone with firsthand experience at a “top” consulting firm this article is pretty accurate, albeit with a definite negative slant. A couple parts that really ring true for me are: > The work will mostly be done by clever but pimply 20-somethings, armed with two-by-two matrix frameworks … What they lack in wisdom will be made up for in long hours. The structure of consulting firms is that a partner (who does actually have a lot of experience with the industry) will “sell” the work to the client and oversee the team that actually does the work. Partners will sell multiple cases at a time and most of time is spent doing sales so most of the work is done by the consulting team with some guidance from the partner. The consulting team will be comprised of a couple of consultants 1-3 years out of undergrad and couple of consultants 1-3 years out of their MBA and a manager who has maybe 5 years of consulting experience. Usually none of them will have any specific domain knowledge. > Question everything Since most of the work is done by (nearly) fresh grads they won’t have a lot of specific industry experience. At the same time it’s hard to find information on the obscure topics they’re researching so the actual information they find will be iffy. Sometimes it will even be made up (they’ll tell the client it’s based on “industry experience” or something but it was probably invented by 23 year old in excel). Regardless the information will be presented to the client as rock solid and scientific (with maybe a little disclaimer at the bottom) In short: The people you’re talking to aren’t the people who are doing the actual work, The people who are doing the work have no industry experience And the numbers they’re basing their analysis on are probably whatever they found on google. I know this comment sounds really critical but I do think there is some value in consultants and they are really good at structuring out a problem but the analysis they do is probably 75% accurate at best

chiefalchemist 3y ago
I've seen this as well. And while not defending such practices, how much experience do the consultant worker-bees need when much of what they gather come from the staff of the hiring company? That is, these consulting firms get called in more because office politics and organization dysfunction is high, too high. The fees aren't so much for expertise per se, but a stupidity tax on the hiring company that lacks the leadership and management to get out of its own way. Put another way, these consulting firms don't hire themselves. The fact that they do get so much work is more of a reflection of how weak and rudderless some Big Incs actually are, than the strengh of the snake oil sells.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Mostly this. Whenever you hear someone say “I’ve been telling them to do X for years”, you have to keep in mind that the value of the consultant is not to come up with the idea to do X, but to tell them to listen to you.
- patja 3y ago
  Lots of Fortune 500 to 1000 companies lack the ability to recruit the best and brightest. And mostly they don't really need them. But when they do, consultants offer a ready made solution to get a project done.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    These places farm companies with the “best and brightest” as well. They sell a shortcut for management. Their asshole hired gun nature lets them short circuit the organization’s power structure. Not too many second layer executives are good at manipulating these consultants.
meetingthrower 3y ago
It is satire, not actually written by a consultant. This is the humor page at the end of the economist. But the fact that it is accurate actually does make it funny, if a bit trite.
- spicebox 3y ago
  Like most good satire it’s based on reality
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > This is the humor page at the end of the economist. Isn't this just a Bartleby article? Their column on management
ghaff 3y ago
The one time I dealt with KcKinsey, the partner was pretty sharp, one of the associates was as well, and the other, well, more arrogant than justified. Overall, in retrospect, the experience was... not terrible. We answered a lot of questions, did a lot of education. They produced a bunch of spreadsheets that kept the business planning people occupied (a good thing). And they basically validated to the senior management that the product managers and related advising on strategy were on the right track. Expensive, yeah. But it's not always the worst thing to get an external sanity check.
- frognumber 3y ago
  I would recommend a good psychic for this -- someone skilled at cold reading. You will receive even better validation and a similarly reliable "external sanity check." If I were in Europe, I'd leave it at that. For the Americans, it's important to dot the i's and cross the t's, so: An art of the industry is telling people what they want to hear. That gets you hired again. Consultants are no good as an external sanity check. They are great for taking the blame for decisions you had planned on making.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Internal people with their own biases and investments are always right. Of course.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      I think it’s more that two times wrong doesn’t make something right.
      - Nevermark 3y ago
        Ah, algebra. Perhaps, geometry? The right thing to do is hire one or more people who have deep knowledge with the problems you are slogging in. Pay them what they are worth. Otherwise, what's left is to higher outside consultants to solve your problem that is so pressing that you are hiring outside consultants to solve it. Fire them and hire new consultants if they don't perform. And if you get very lucky, three lefts will make a right!
conductr 3y ago
In my experience, this is all disclosed (partner/manager/associate). Pretty much any proposal I've seen from the top firms includes a cost estimate built by using hours x rate for each respective job title and often further broken down by stage of the project. Time and material bids are most common so you should be asking for this up-front, I actually view it as a bit of a red flag if they don't voluntarily disclose/bid it this way (eg. if I'm paying for time, I need to know how much time is being planned for and by which rate level).
- smokefoot 3y ago
  The more expensive the services, the less likely you are to get a bid in this format.
  - squirrel6 3y ago
    This is very true. The more ambitious the scope is, the more difficult it is to provide a bid in that format. Also, expensive engagements are priced on perceived value anyway.
  - conductr 3y ago
    Very true. I regularly get it on $500k-$2m projects, that's probably considered small. Of course it's caveated to hell with talk of "projection", "risk", etc. But that's part of my job is asking questions so I can anticipate whether they can execute on this or if it's perhaps some ambitious low bidding techniques. FWIW, I also don't work in tech. Finance/accounting/management consultants are my world. I could definitely see how software/tech is more ambiguous by it's very nature.
- squirrel6 3y ago
  In reality, we would usually take the value-based fee (how much we think it’s worth) and then allocate it down to scope bullets, which are also usually very vague.
jeron 3y ago
>In short: The people you’re talking to aren’t the people who are doing the actual work, The people who are doing the work have no industry experience And the numbers they’re basing their analysis on are probably whatever they found on google. this has always been the most mindboggling thing about consultants. I have a few friends working as consultants and occasionally when they discuss cases, I always think to myself, "who on earth are you to advise them about so-and-so management when you literally just graduated college a year or two ago?"
- simmonmt 3y ago
  The value is that (ideally) they've asked around and figured out how half a dozen peer firms do what you're struggling with. So while they may not have solved your management problem personally, they can give you an idea of what's worked for your peers without all the icky industrial espionage and antitrust violations you'd need to find it out yourself.
  - spicebox 3y ago
    It’s not espionage, it’s an expert network!
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    They call it “best practices”. Where did they learn what’s changed in best practices for fast food logistics since the last time they consulted for Burger King? Well, funny enough, they were recently engaged by McDonalds…
  - shostack 3y ago
    This. You can have an open acknowledgement that the consultant knows jack as long as they can give you the sourcing of their underlying insights and best practices and it passes the sniff test.
    - rvba 3y ago
      Usually it is google search
thenewarrakis 3y ago
>In short: The people you’re talking to aren’t the people who are doing the actual work, The people who are doing the work have no industry experience And the numbers they’re basing their analysis on are probably whatever they found on google. I think this really sets the wrong expectations. The partner or director that sold you the work may not be doing the day-to-day work, but that doesn't mean they aren't involved. Behind the scenes, the consulting team should be frequently checking in with the director/partner to make sure they are on the right track. Major deliverables are reviewed by the director/partner before they are seen by the client. You should also be meeting with the director/partner frequently to make sure they are aware of any feedback you have about the consulting team's work. If these things aren't happening, you should give that feedback to the partner and look elsewhere for future work. The good consulting firms may not hire people with industry experience, but instead they select hires that are good at researching and gathering data from a lot of different sources and synthesizing it into pieces of information that are more easily digestible by others. This is what enables those consultants to get quick feedback from people who do have industry experience (the directors, partners, or others in the consulting company that they have access to) and course correct where needed. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of scummy consulting groups out there. IMO the key thing is to understand that while the partner who sells you the work may not be the one _doing_ the work, the people doing the work _will_ follow in the partners footsteps. If the partner is mostly absent, or you think the partner is pulling a fast one on you, their team probably is too (or vice versa), and you should ditch them at the first opportunity. If you have a good relationship with the partner and think you can trust them, they are going to try and maintain that trust by making sure the team doesn't do anything to betray that trust.
refurb 3y ago
I've been on both sides - as a management consultant at a top firm and within a corporation hiring a top consulting firm. The grunt consultants are the ones making the slides, but they aren't deciding the direction of the project or the output. Every project I worked on as a consultant had a lot of input from the person who sold the work (their reputation is on the line!). But let's be honest, most consulting projects aren't mind blowing - basic stuff like "what is the competition doing", "what is the the flavor of the month for fund raising". And in terms of "not having experience in the area", that's fine in a lot of cases. Often consultants are brought in to do work the company doesn't have the resources to do. Or, if it's a new area you need advice on, you partner with the consulting firm on how to do that. Maybe it's interviewing experts in the field, maybe it's creating case studies of how other companies did it. I did work with one consulting firm that had domain knowledge (small boutique firm). The consultants had industry experience and a ton of contacts. We basically boiled down what answered we needed and they tracked down the answers. While on both side I've never been a part of the a project where what consultants offered wasn't 100% clear to the client. HN acts like consultants are pulling the wool over clients eyes but that's never been my experience. They new exactly what they were paying for.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

I've seen this as well. And while not defending such practices, how much experience do the consultant worker-bees need when much of what they gather come from the staff of the hiring company? That is, these consulting firms get called in more because office politics and organization dysfunction is high, too high. The fees aren't so much for expertise per se, but a stupidity tax on the hiring company that lacks the leadership and management to get out of its own way. Put another way, these consulting firms don't hire themselves. The fact that they do get so much work is more of a reflection of how weak and rudderless some Big Incs actually are, than the strengh of the snake oil sells.

jncfhnb 3y ago
Mostly this. Whenever you hear someone say “I’ve been telling them to do X for years”, you have to keep in mind that the value of the consultant is not to come up with the idea to do X, but to tell them to listen to you.
patja 3y ago
Lots of Fortune 500 to 1000 companies lack the ability to recruit the best and brightest. And mostly they don't really need them. But when they do, consultants offer a ready made solution to get a project done.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  These places farm companies with the “best and brightest” as well. They sell a shortcut for management. Their asshole hired gun nature lets them short circuit the organization’s power structure. Not too many second layer executives are good at manipulating these consultants.

meetingthrower 3y ago

It is satire, not actually written by a consultant. This is the humor page at the end of the economist. But the fact that it is accurate actually does make it funny, if a bit trite.

spicebox 3y ago
Like most good satire it’s based on reality
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
whimsicalism 3y ago
> This is the humor page at the end of the economist. Isn't this just a Bartleby article? Their column on management

ghaff 3y ago

The one time I dealt with KcKinsey, the partner was pretty sharp, one of the associates was as well, and the other, well, more arrogant than justified. Overall, in retrospect, the experience was... not terrible. We answered a lot of questions, did a lot of education. They produced a bunch of spreadsheets that kept the business planning people occupied (a good thing). And they basically validated to the senior management that the product managers and related advising on strategy were on the right track. Expensive, yeah. But it's not always the worst thing to get an external sanity check.

frognumber 3y ago
I would recommend a good psychic for this -- someone skilled at cold reading. You will receive even better validation and a similarly reliable "external sanity check." If I were in Europe, I'd leave it at that. For the Americans, it's important to dot the i's and cross the t's, so: An art of the industry is telling people what they want to hear. That gets you hired again. Consultants are no good as an external sanity check. They are great for taking the blame for decisions you had planned on making.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Internal people with their own biases and investments are always right. Of course.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    I think it’s more that two times wrong doesn’t make something right.
    - Nevermark 3y ago
      Ah, algebra. Perhaps, geometry? The right thing to do is hire one or more people who have deep knowledge with the problems you are slogging in. Pay them what they are worth. Otherwise, what's left is to higher outside consultants to solve your problem that is so pressing that you are hiring outside consultants to solve it. Fire them and hire new consultants if they don't perform. And if you get very lucky, three lefts will make a right!

conductr 3y ago

In my experience, this is all disclosed (partner/manager/associate). Pretty much any proposal I've seen from the top firms includes a cost estimate built by using hours x rate for each respective job title and often further broken down by stage of the project. Time and material bids are most common so you should be asking for this up-front, I actually view it as a bit of a red flag if they don't voluntarily disclose/bid it this way (eg. if I'm paying for time, I need to know how much time is being planned for and by which rate level).

smokefoot 3y ago
The more expensive the services, the less likely you are to get a bid in this format.
- squirrel6 3y ago
  This is very true. The more ambitious the scope is, the more difficult it is to provide a bid in that format. Also, expensive engagements are priced on perceived value anyway.
- conductr 3y ago
  Very true. I regularly get it on $500k-$2m projects, that's probably considered small. Of course it's caveated to hell with talk of "projection", "risk", etc. But that's part of my job is asking questions so I can anticipate whether they can execute on this or if it's perhaps some ambitious low bidding techniques. FWIW, I also don't work in tech. Finance/accounting/management consultants are my world. I could definitely see how software/tech is more ambiguous by it's very nature.
squirrel6 3y ago
In reality, we would usually take the value-based fee (how much we think it’s worth) and then allocate it down to scope bullets, which are also usually very vague.

jeron 3y ago

>In short: The people you’re talking to aren’t the people who are doing the actual work, The people who are doing the work have no industry experience And the numbers they’re basing their analysis on are probably whatever they found on google. this has always been the most mindboggling thing about consultants. I have a few friends working as consultants and occasionally when they discuss cases, I always think to myself, "who on earth are you to advise them about so-and-so management when you literally just graduated college a year or two ago?"

simmonmt 3y ago
The value is that (ideally) they've asked around and figured out how half a dozen peer firms do what you're struggling with. So while they may not have solved your management problem personally, they can give you an idea of what's worked for your peers without all the icky industrial espionage and antitrust violations you'd need to find it out yourself.
- spicebox 3y ago
  It’s not espionage, it’s an expert network!
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  They call it “best practices”. Where did they learn what’s changed in best practices for fast food logistics since the last time they consulted for Burger King? Well, funny enough, they were recently engaged by McDonalds…
- shostack 3y ago
  This. You can have an open acknowledgement that the consultant knows jack as long as they can give you the sourcing of their underlying insights and best practices and it passes the sniff test.
  - rvba 3y ago
    Usually it is google search

thenewarrakis 3y ago

>In short: The people you’re talking to aren’t the people who are doing the actual work, The people who are doing the work have no industry experience And the numbers they’re basing their analysis on are probably whatever they found on google. I think this really sets the wrong expectations. The partner or director that sold you the work may not be doing the day-to-day work, but that doesn't mean they aren't involved. Behind the scenes, the consulting team should be frequently checking in with the director/partner to make sure they are on the right track. Major deliverables are reviewed by the director/partner before they are seen by the client. You should also be meeting with the director/partner frequently to make sure they are aware of any feedback you have about the consulting team's work. If these things aren't happening, you should give that feedback to the partner and look elsewhere for future work. The good consulting firms may not hire people with industry experience, but instead they select hires that are good at researching and gathering data from a lot of different sources and synthesizing it into pieces of information that are more easily digestible by others. This is what enables those consultants to get quick feedback from people who do have industry experience (the directors, partners, or others in the consulting company that they have access to) and course correct where needed. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of scummy consulting groups out there. IMO the key thing is to understand that while the partner who sells you the work may not be the one _doing_ the work, the people doing the work _will_ follow in the partners footsteps. If the partner is mostly absent, or you think the partner is pulling a fast one on you, their team probably is too (or vice versa), and you should ditch them at the first opportunity. If you have a good relationship with the partner and think you can trust them, they are going to try and maintain that trust by making sure the team doesn't do anything to betray that trust.

refurb 3y ago

I've been on both sides - as a management consultant at a top firm and within a corporation hiring a top consulting firm. The grunt consultants are the ones making the slides, but they aren't deciding the direction of the project or the output. Every project I worked on as a consultant had a lot of input from the person who sold the work (their reputation is on the line!). But let's be honest, most consulting projects aren't mind blowing - basic stuff like "what is the competition doing", "what is the the flavor of the month for fund raising". And in terms of "not having experience in the area", that's fine in a lot of cases. Often consultants are brought in to do work the company doesn't have the resources to do. Or, if it's a new area you need advice on, you partner with the consulting firm on how to do that. Maybe it's interviewing experts in the field, maybe it's creating case studies of how other companies did it. I did work with one consulting firm that had domain knowledge (small boutique firm). The consultants had industry experience and a ton of contacts. We basically boiled down what answered we needed and they tracked down the answers. While on both side I've never been a part of the a project where what consultants offered wasn't 100% clear to the client. HN acts like consultants are pulling the wool over clients eyes but that's never been my experience. They new exactly what they were paying for.