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How AI is creating a rift at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG
- therobot24 2y agopaywall
- esalman 2y agoI never even heard of this website/magazine and even they have a Paywall.
- treetalker 2y agoI mean, what's an extra $120–$299 per year to subscribe to this website, especially when it's of such high quality that it already has > 5,00,000+ subscribers [sic] ?
- achierius 2y agoIt's the Indian English convention for placing commas in numbers -- one comma after the first three digits, then one comma after every two digits thereafter. e.g. 1,23,45,67,890.
- puzzledobserver 2y agoIt looks like the website is based in India. Instead of the ones(10^0)-thousands(10^3)-millions(10^6)-billions(10^9)-... system followed in most other parts of the world, the Indian numbering system uses ones(10^0)-thousands(10^3)-lakhs(10^5)-crores(10^7)-... So, for example, half a million subscribers (500,000) would translate to 5 lakh subscribers (5,00,000).
- ripe 2y agoSeems to be using the Indian numbering system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
- jaredwiener 2y agoIt's almost as if their desire for getting paid for their work is unrelated to your awareness of them.
- vantassell 2y agohttps://archive.is/mJJOx https://archive.is/mJJOx
- PaulHoule 2y agoDoesn't work for that site. Archive/Whatever only works if a site lets Google have free access so Google can index it and that one (like most off-brand news blogs) doesn't.
- AndrewDucker 2y agoThat's not how Archive works - it saves pages using people's browsers. Try archiving a page yourself and you can watch it do so.
- PaulHoule 2y agoWhat it shows you is a progress report of what it is doing on the server. If you queue something for it to archive and close your browser and then come back later the page will be archived.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- alabastervlog 2y ago> Welcome to management consulting in 2025, where much of what you see on a consultant’s deck has been outsourced to generative AI tools—including, funnily enough, the deck itself. I’m sure they are talking about the meaning of the deck, but they’ve already long offshored the creation of the decks to India. They make notes during the day, send the notes to India, receive decks the next morning. Dunno about the rest, can’t see it.
- rchaud 2y agoThe website is India-based, so they may be talking about the consulting offices in India.
- WorkerBee28474 2y agoThe consulting firms have just realized they can outsource everything save their core competency - taking the blame.
- rchaud 2y agoIf McKinsey took the blame, businesses would stop working with them. They haven't. McKinsey has too much influence on Wall St, the SEC, FTC and Capitol Hill tor companies to ignore them. Corporate execs come and go, but McKinsey's presence is eternal. They are the closest thing America has to centralized economic planning.
- game_the0ry 2y agoI thought this would go without saying, but once SWE jobs are automated by AI (if it were to happen), then every job can be automated. Even sales - I hear of companies building bots that do outreach with human voices. But the professional careers that were once considered "prestigious" (strategy consulting, investment banking, law, medicine) will be the most disrupted bc labor costs are the highest in those. Imagine a lawyer doing discovery in minutes, rather than days or weeks. Imagine a doctor that can diagnose you from your smart phone. The world is not ready for those changes.
- tharne 2y ago> I thought this would go without saying, but once SWE jobs are automated by AI (if it were to happen), then every job can be automated. I think this is exactly right, and possibly a good thing relative to the alternative. If AI were able to automate 20% of office-type jobs, you'd have a lot of people out of work, but likely not enough for anyone to do anything about it at a societal level. Those people would just be given some platitude in the same way out of work coal miners or assembly line workers were snidely told to "learn to code". If every or nearly every office-type job gets automated, it would force us to address the issue in a meaningful way.
- flipthetable 2y agoDoctors aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Their jobs often go far beyond diagnosis. For instance, in paediatrics one of the trickiest types of case to deal with are those relating to safeguarding. The tact required to navigate those situations, eg. correctly identify whether an unexplained bruise is a signal to flag a safeguarding issue or has a reasonable explanation, is not something that can be automated and would likely receive a lot of pushback. It is worth noting that in 1930 Keynes predicted that the work week would shrink to 15 hours thanks to advances in automation. I have great confidence in our abilities to create more work for each other.
- cglace 2y agoYeah, my job is now automating tasks using AI and code instead of automating tasks with just code. The code part has gone down, and the abstraction has moved up a layer, but I have more work than ever.
- tharne 2y agoI don't think AI will have much of an impact on management consulting, since it's really just executive insurance. If anything, management consulting might be the perfect use for generative AI in its current state. If you're a CEO running a company, you can go out and hire McKinsey and tell the board, "I'm a great CEO, that's why I brought in McKinsey. They're the BEST". McKinsey then proceeds to charge you a bunch of money and leaves you with some very slick powerpoints containing a bunch of advice, roadmaps, org charts, and action items. If your company has a few good quarters after that you can say, "Look at what a great CEO I am, I brought in some best in class consultants and now our stock price is through the roof!". If on the other hand your company struggles, misses earnings targets, etc., you can say, "It's not my fault we're doing badly, I brought in a team of best in class consultants and even THEY couldn't help us turn things around yet - it must be the macro economy, industry headwinds, etc. Imagine how much worse we'd be doing if I didn't bring McKinsey in!"
- cglace 2y agoIn this article: https://medium.com/@takafumi.endo/how-ai-is-redefining-strategy-consulting-insights-from-mckinsey-bcg-and-bain-69d6d82f1bab https://medium.com/@takafumi.endo/how-ai-is-redefining-strat... You can see how AI is already transforming consulting at the Big 3.
- alabastervlog 2y agoThey're not just executive insurance. They're also a normalized industrial espionage and wink-and-nudge collusion service. They call all that stuff "best practices".
- upghost 2y agoOk... you got me. Can you unpack this a bit? Are you saying the consulting services, like, launder techniques and IP from their clients and reuse it other clients or...?
- klank 2y agoYes. Part of why you use a consultant like McKinsey is because they are talking to everybody else. So when they tell you "best practices" they are telling you what everybody else is doing. In a way that cover's everyone's ass legally* of course. But that's what they're doing. EDIT: * - by "legally" I mean allow information to be shared in a way that precludes legal repercussions but I do not necessarily mean adherence to the law.
- alephnerd 2y agoA lot of very dismissive takes on consulting within this thread. That said, the article is on point about how junior and associate roles are now on the line. You can be dismissive all you want on here, but at the end of the day, FAANG, MBB, YC, and BBs - not MBAs - are the LDPs of the 21st century, and if you don't like leadership at companies today, it's only going to get worse, because the people who survive this will be even more mercenary.
- conartist6 2y agoI'm not sure that's true. This particular brand of idiocy could go extinct in something close to a heartbeat. A few trillion dollars gone when the bubble pops and suddenly many of these leaders will look more like gang leaders than visionaries
- conartist6 2y agoIt seems to me that these CEOs are all-in on the bubble. They're simply not worried about inflating the tech beyond it's real value. They'll force it down people's throats and then claim that they have tons of users. They don't even both trying to sell the idea that their product is good for humanity. They're doing their level best to kill art, to kill journalism, to kill medicine, to end the job market as a source of opportunity... Let's be clear: the AI playbook is the same playbook SV always has. Get a lot of people to come in and look around, then lock them inside and start to exploit them for your gain. It's just the scope of the control they seek now is orders of magnitude more than they ever have before. They are trying to convince people to stop thinking for themselves, to stop doing art, to stop valuing art, and in general, for the engineers and employees they've already locked into their power structure, never to question that this is the way of the future
- rchaud 2y agoThat's like saying war is bad for the construction industry because there won't be any demand for real estate development. War is extremely lucrative because there will be "reconstruction" contracts once the dust settles. For McKinsey, these are equivalent to "restructuring" businesses after economic recessions. Trillions were lost in the March 2000 dotcom collapse and the September 2008 crash. McKinsey, Bain etc emerged unscathed. There's plenty of business to go around even if the economy is in shambles.
- gessha 2y agoDo public companies disclose hiring consulting companies like McKinsey?
- rchaud 2y agoIf they're in the S&P 500, you can assume that they do. McKinsey's influence isn't just via consultants either, plenty of execs are former McKinsey people. Sundar Pichai and Sheryl Sandberg being two big names.
- randcraw 2y agoYeah. BigCo administrators universally point to business intelligence arising from competitors as the 'second pillar' in justifying policy, especially related to internal corporate organization or HR standards.
- Seattle3503 2y ago> Instead of making their life easier, AI has resulted in drastically reduced timelines and ebbing appreciation for creativity. I've felt this personally as a dev. We are getting squeezed to move and deliver faster because we have AI.
- rchaud 2y agoI liken AI hype to crypto hype. There will be always be some wide-eyed techno-optimist rube waxing poetic about how AI will open the door towards a 4-day workweek, just like how crypto will strengthen civil society by reducing the influence of banks in handling commerce. The reality is a lot simpler (and darker) when you realize who the buyers of this technology are, and what they want from it. And what they want is always the same...more, and faster.
- newfocogi 2y agoI'm close with someone who is on the Digital side of McKinsey, and they said they attended some meeting where a partner was asked what he was excited about for the future, and he said something like "the opportunities from AI agents replacing software developers". The audience was a room full of McKinsey's software devs.
- cbozeman 2y agoThis just proves to me that we do not actually have a meritocracy, because only a fucking moron would say that, in that environment, and a moron would not rise to the level of partner in a legitimate meritocratic environment.
- SpaceManNabs 2y agoAI agents are more likely to replace associates at these firms than software devs lol. AI agents can't do sql queries a lot of the time, but they sure can autofill the remainder of most excel sheets (and AI agents can't really autocomplete sql queries yet for some reason lol). Yes, I use claude to code sometimes, but I use claude much more as an assistant to brainstorm tasks and mindmap than actually doing software engineering because vibe coding builds brittle projects. Whereas one-off decks are a perfect use case Now replacing people that require a license or some other sort of credentials like lawyers, doctors or accountants... That is much harder.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoThat reminds me of a presentation the CEO of one of my former employers gave. Somebody asked why we weren't expanding into Europe and he said because it's harder to fire people there.
- SpaceManNabs 2y agoWhat stops these consulting firms from replacing the bulk of their consultants with AI if the associates are all just outsourcing every detail anyways? These people should be a lot more worried lol.
- disqard 2y agoAll it'll take is for one firm to break ranks (fire consultants and replace them with AI), and for the stock market to reward that behavior. Then, it'll be checkmate.
- etempleton 2y agoBecause the consultants real job is to be a glorified sales rep and you need a person to do that.
- elicksaur 2y agoWhy would “sales rep” be immune to the magical singularity AI that will be 9000 IQ points smarter than all of humanity combined?
- wiether 2y agoBecause most people still prefer to receive (fake) compliments from humans and still prefer to get dined by humans
- reval 2y agoThat’s a cynical way of saying that maintaining relationships and trading information are the things of value. Accepting this will make any job more fulfilling- even with AI.
- justlikereddit 2y agoInstead of overpaid and incompetent Consultant-people making choices on the payroll of politicians using taxpayers money, to implement costly and enshittified project recommendations. That the actual end-user that was never asked anything about. We can now replace the cuntsultants with an incompetent AI making the same faulty recommendations at ten times the speed and same cost, but ten times wider profit margin. Splendid.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mawadev 2y agoHol up, they managed to make management consultants even more redundant?
- bravetraveler 2y agoRedundancies all the way down
- karemmom 2y ago[flagged]