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My wife made a McKinsey consultant cry… she hired McKinsey for some internal project. One person on the project was a recent Harvard grad. They were in a meetin

My wife made a McKinsey consultant cry… she hired McKinsey for some internal project. One person on the project was a recent Harvard grad. They were in a meeting going over the deliverables along with the McKinsey partner on the project and in the meeting my wife said something to the effect that their work wasn’t up to McKinsey standards. The junior guy started crying in the meeting. Like just blubbering. My wife still feels bad for it but still… Weird thing, instead of firing him McKinsey kept him and stipulated that he can only be in meetings when the partner is present.

yodsanklai 1y ago
McKinsey employees are people too
biker142541 1y ago
Genuinely funny. Had to once interface with a small team from Deloitte on a project, and pushed hard during an early meeting for them to outline the problems and scope. Just complete incompetence... I didn't make anyone cry, but definitely squirm a lot. Just asking questions about their understanding, process to close gap of understanding, and project management plans were enough to make clear to the main executive stakeholder on our end that this was going to be a trainwreck. They were fired shortly after.
shitpostbot 1y ago
[dead]
SJC_Hacker 1y ago
I don't care if you went to Ivy League and graduated at the top of your class, I really don't get WTF someone whose life experience has been almost exclusively in school really knows running about business. Get at least a few years work experience and call me. Or alternatively, start your own dang business if you are really that smart.
- guywithahat 1y ago
  The whole business is nonsensical. The point of a consultant is they have a lot of experience in a specific domain, a recent Harvard grad is useless. From what I've heard, tons of their consultants are young people with minimal real industry experience
  - Raidion 1y ago
    You pay for one or two people with real experience and 4 reasonably new hires whose job it is to answer questions posed by the senior team and to build documentation. You want the senior people focusing on the problems, strategy, and comms and not data aggregation and power point formatting. Half the time it doesn't actually matter who the consultant is, the business is just looking for an arbiter to provide a second opinion or justify a decision.
    - azemetre 1y ago
      How does this not vindicate their viewpoint? Do you really need a team of ivy grads to make power points or inexperienced people to give unqualified answers? Modern consulting seems like one of the better deaths inflicted by GenAI. The entire industry is a means to commit corporate espionage legally. They can do something more useful with that education.
    - macrocyclo 1y ago
      >Half the time it doesn't actually matter who the consultant is, the business is just looking for an arbiter to provide a second opinion or justify a decision. It's much easier to feel good about a decision if you can get some McKinsey people to hold your hand and tell you it will be ok while making it.
  - throw4847285 1y ago
    They have a brutal up or out culture. The idea is that the recent grads are grunts who are ground into the dirt. They actively hope that most of them quit and the few who don't get promoted into positions where they do have the experience, or really, one very specific type of experience that consultancy firms select for. Similar setup to Big Law.
chollida1 1y ago
> Weird thing, instead of firing him McKinsey kept him and stipulated that he can only be in meetings when the partner is present. Why would they fire him after a singe incident? Sounds like McKinsey is a more companionate organization than you, and that's saying something:)
- yodsanklai 1y ago
  That's what I thought. Having the partner present seems to be the right way of handling this. The company is responsible for employees well-being and shouldn't let a client bullying them.
  - mannyv 1y ago
    Client bullying? Saying the works sucks isn't bullying, unless you didn't know you were incompetent.
    - yodsanklai 1y ago
      We weren't in the meeting, but if the person cried, there's a possibility that the person was actually bullied. If the work sucks, it can be discussed outside of the meeting with the person's manager for instance. It's not because the person works for McKinsey and is an inexperienced ivy league graduate that it's ok to be mean.
frankfrank13 1y ago
Having worked at Mck, what I could very well imagine happened behind the scenes here was 1. This BA/Asc was on <4 hours of sleep, maybe many days in a row 2. They walked into that meeting thinking they had completed exactly what the client (your wife) wanted And after the meeting (this I feel more confident about, as it happens a lot) 1. A conversation happened to see if the BA/Asc wanted to stay on the project 2. They said yes, and the leadership decided that the best way to make this person feel safe was to always have a more experienced person in the room to deal with hiccups (in this case, the perception of low quality work) Isn't that... good? What else would you expect
watwut 1y ago
Are you genuinely surprised they dis not fired him for a single incident?
- tecleandor 1y ago
  McKinsey (or Boston, or any of their peers...) happily recommends firing hundreds or thousands of people for any vague reason each time time are brought for an "optimization process".

yodsanklai 1y ago

McKinsey employees are people too

biker142541 1y ago

Genuinely funny. Had to once interface with a small team from Deloitte on a project, and pushed hard during an early meeting for them to outline the problems and scope. Just complete incompetence... I didn't make anyone cry, but definitely squirm a lot. Just asking questions about their understanding, process to close gap of understanding, and project management plans were enough to make clear to the main executive stakeholder on our end that this was going to be a trainwreck. They were fired shortly after.

shitpostbot 1y ago

[dead]

SJC_Hacker 1y ago

I don't care if you went to Ivy League and graduated at the top of your class, I really don't get WTF someone whose life experience has been almost exclusively in school really knows running about business. Get at least a few years work experience and call me. Or alternatively, start your own dang business if you are really that smart.

guywithahat 1y ago
The whole business is nonsensical. The point of a consultant is they have a lot of experience in a specific domain, a recent Harvard grad is useless. From what I've heard, tons of their consultants are young people with minimal real industry experience
- Raidion 1y ago
  You pay for one or two people with real experience and 4 reasonably new hires whose job it is to answer questions posed by the senior team and to build documentation. You want the senior people focusing on the problems, strategy, and comms and not data aggregation and power point formatting. Half the time it doesn't actually matter who the consultant is, the business is just looking for an arbiter to provide a second opinion or justify a decision.
  - azemetre 1y ago
    How does this not vindicate their viewpoint? Do you really need a team of ivy grads to make power points or inexperienced people to give unqualified answers? Modern consulting seems like one of the better deaths inflicted by GenAI. The entire industry is a means to commit corporate espionage legally. They can do something more useful with that education.
  - macrocyclo 1y ago
    >Half the time it doesn't actually matter who the consultant is, the business is just looking for an arbiter to provide a second opinion or justify a decision. It's much easier to feel good about a decision if you can get some McKinsey people to hold your hand and tell you it will be ok while making it.
- throw4847285 1y ago
  They have a brutal up or out culture. The idea is that the recent grads are grunts who are ground into the dirt. They actively hope that most of them quit and the few who don't get promoted into positions where they do have the experience, or really, one very specific type of experience that consultancy firms select for. Similar setup to Big Law.

chollida1 1y ago

> Weird thing, instead of firing him McKinsey kept him and stipulated that he can only be in meetings when the partner is present. Why would they fire him after a singe incident? Sounds like McKinsey is a more companionate organization than you, and that's saying something:)

yodsanklai 1y ago
That's what I thought. Having the partner present seems to be the right way of handling this. The company is responsible for employees well-being and shouldn't let a client bullying them.
- mannyv 1y ago
  Client bullying? Saying the works sucks isn't bullying, unless you didn't know you were incompetent.
  - yodsanklai 1y ago
    We weren't in the meeting, but if the person cried, there's a possibility that the person was actually bullied. If the work sucks, it can be discussed outside of the meeting with the person's manager for instance. It's not because the person works for McKinsey and is an inexperienced ivy league graduate that it's ok to be mean.

frankfrank13 1y ago

Having worked at Mck, what I could very well imagine happened behind the scenes here was 1. This BA/Asc was on <4 hours of sleep, maybe many days in a row 2. They walked into that meeting thinking they had completed exactly what the client (your wife) wanted And after the meeting (this I feel more confident about, as it happens a lot) 1. A conversation happened to see if the BA/Asc wanted to stay on the project 2. They said yes, and the leadership decided that the best way to make this person feel safe was to always have a more experienced person in the room to deal with hiccups (in this case, the perception of low quality work) Isn't that... good? What else would you expect

watwut 1y ago

Are you genuinely surprised they dis not fired him for a single incident?

tecleandor 1y ago
McKinsey (or Boston, or any of their peers...) happily recommends firing hundreds or thousands of people for any vague reason each time time are brought for an "optimization process".