Comment by smfjaw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smfjaw | Hacker News Reader

I worked previously at one of these places. It's quite interesting, they create solutions that are really only 'happy path' solutions that work in a perfect world and it's honestly kind of expected.

You pay $100k a week for a bunch of ivy league/top uni graduates who are very intelligent but lack any real world experience who ultimately only deliver a slide deck and some recommendations so they don't have any real liability, a 21 year old grad can't navigate a lay off round properly and can only provide these 'happy path' recommendations, similar to how a lottery winner won't make good business owner, they have all the money but not the knowledge, the Mckinsey junior has all the knowledge but no experience. Execs hire them because they don't want to be the decision maker only the proxy decision maker and can say 'McKinsey advised this was the only solution to do layoffs/restructure/unpopular thing and they're the ones that know' when in reality all the exec needed was a short stop to back them up.

Obviously this only relates to their management consulting/advisory arms

My understanding was they were brought in to validate the opinion of the hirer. As I once said before

"This was one of those big eye opening moments for me. Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling. You pay them a bunch of money to come run roughshod over your enemies by producing reams of analysis and Powerpoints, to fling the arrows of jargon, and lay siege to your enemies employees by endlessly trapping them in meetings and then they depart. Consultants are brought in to secure your flank, to provide air cover and to act as disposable pawns in interoffice combat.

They are not brought in to solve problems, to find solutions, or because of their incredibly acumen. It's because they have no loyalty or love but money."

I think I saw this the first time you wrote it. It’s genius, and I think perfectly accurate.

(Although, speaking as a consultant, we are not all like that. It is of course the big consulting companies being hired into the big-end-of-town companies. Some of us little guys really do care about our customers.)

Copying my favorite quote from a different thread about data scientists: it's 'decision-based evidence-making'

They're also an acceptable form of corporate espionage. Mid- and higher-level consultants (there's usually one with relevant experience at least advising a team remotely, at least providing some background documents for them) will provide sets of "best practices" for you to adopt... that they learned from your competition. Anything you're doing well, they'll note, and those will be "best practices" when your competition engages them again.

  a 21 year old grad

I hope this is hyperbole or using the term "consultant" when really meaning "pawn from a staff enhancement agency" (as is often done). Because the accusation seems to be that consultancies sell merely the appearance of expertise and nobody would buy into the appearance of a 21 year old.

My experience working with teams from Anderson (now Accenture) and Deloitte was that they heavily favored youth and attractiveness over knowledge and experience.

The consultants doing the selling and schmoozing with the client's upper brass are rarely if ever the same as the grunts on the ground doing the work, who are often fresh grads.

When McKinsey/Bain/BCG goes to a client, the project is usually sold to the CEO or senior exec by a 40-50 year old Director or Senior Partner at the consulting firm. The project kicks off with a "case team leader" who is the only full time person on staff, they are usually like 30, running a group of 22-28 year olds, who are doing the work with the client executives who are usually 2-4 levels down from the CEO. The partners from the consulting firm are not full time on the project and their job is to keep the project on track, present the conclusions to the client at the end, but most importantly to keep the money flowing from the client.

Well that makes more sense. Having a couple of senior-looking people come once, drop a bunch of fresh grads "taking notes" to rake up the billable hours, then come back to deliver a "report" -and by come back I mean just forward the email- is more believable, at least in the plausible deniability sense.

I was responding to this quote by OP here:

  ultimately only deliver a slide deck and some recommendations so they don't have any real liability , a 21 year old grad can't navigate a lay off round properly and can only provide these 'happy path' recommendations

And the thought of a 21 year old dispensing some recommendations just like that was hilarious. "you should like, synergize some more, you feel me? okay bye!"

Consulting doesn't really use the "billable hours" model, not to the client. The client is billed a fixed fee. Hours are accounted for internally, with each person in the consulting firm trying to bill their hours "to the project" -- a case team leader might need to bill $6,000 a day for example, a senior partner $15,000, a junior person $3,000. The juniors don't really have to worry about this, everyone knows they're full-time and powerless to do anything else, so they bill all their hours to the project. The senior partners are in charge and bill however many hours they want to their projects. Usually whatever cash is left over is not enough for the mid-tier people, so they politick and fight over the scraps to show high utilization and survive to bill another day.

> And the thought of a 21 year old dispensing some recommendations just like that was hilarious. "you should like, synergize some more, you feel me? okay bye!"

Unironically, this is what takes place. Have seen it as an IT consultant.

Some kid out of GA Tech or VA Tech or some tech school that isn't Ivy or MIT/Stanford throws out middle-brow wisdom about steps to take which includesball the right buzzwords, and then passes it on me to twist it into a coherent narrative with steps for the client to take.

The client sees a hip young 20-something (actually just 23) throwing out buzzwords that they've seen via YouTube ads or occasional blurbs in The Economist and feel satisfied -- this all lines up. Containers are a thing, everyone is talking about them, therefore we make everything a container. The HIP NEW THING has been laid bare, and I throw out buzzwords tell folks to "leaning in" to it and other management-smooth-over-techniques, and then bill $900/hr and collect a bonus at the end of the year.

Easily 60% of the engagement could have been cribbed from a Docker / Mirantis sales video, with bits from Sandler Sales Mgmt videos. I could probably get 90% of you to a point where you could do this, regardless of background.

They were paying $900/hr.

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