Hacker News Reader

Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

Watering down an opioid safety program when the negative externalities of pushing opioids onto patients was very apparent is definitely not ethical.

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).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com