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Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

When I was running a startup there were lots of times when I felt kind of lost and it's very tempting to listen to things like this because they seem plausible. It's a huge mistake.

This kind of generic armchair general "advice"[1] is everywhere when you run a company and is basically completely useless because every company is a complex and unique special case and if you're in charge you don't have to make the decision that would on average be the right decision for companies of your type, you have to make the best decision you can for your specific situation. This goes double for people decisions because they have a huge impact on those affected so it behooves you to take the time to really do your utmost to do it right.

[1] By which I mean the kind of phoned-in powerpoint analysis that would be produced by someone with a career at a 2nd tier wannabe McKinsey consultancy

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I wouldn't hold any special reverence for McKinsey.

In general with any of the management consultants, you're going to get people with very little actual experience telling you how to run your company.

Whilst some of the stuff, usually more accountancy / factual based, doesn't require experience, and thus may be delivered to a high standard, you're also going to got a bunch of hot takes that don't make sense in reality.

Outsourcing, the Spotify model, and not really agile Agile are all sold by the top tier consultants, even though you basically can't name successful examples.

Completely agree. We had McKinsey crawling all over one company I worked for and in the "workstream" I was the main point of contact for they had the first meeting where they "were in listening mode" and at the end of the meeting I said "look, if your plan for this workstream is to take everything I've just told you and put it on powerpoint slides and tell it back to us while charging for your time that's not going to work. So if we have a session tomorrow you actually have to bring something". They called our CEO and shut our workstream because they said they didn't think they could add enough value.

All the other workstreams continued for a while with them burning our investors' money and also all ended with a big nothingburger.

Basically the team we worked with had one guy who was genuinely brilliant - razor sharp, really knew his stuff etc just great - and like 8 people there whose function was to pad the billable hours, make slides, carry printouts and drink the free coffee.

I'm sure some management consultants provide utility to a lot of larger companies which might be inefficient. I know some of them have identified procedures or process that are irrational or time consuming and can offer ways to improve efficiency. But a lot of it doesn't lead to any change in the end.

Most company leaders are probably clueless on how to react to a downturn but feel they gotta do something. 5-15% of a layoff is the sweet spot and generally accepted practice when recession looms. Look at what Elon did by cutting 50% which is fireplace style survival mode and will crater team moral permanently. I think this article just builds reasoning around the 5-15% number to sound impressive.

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