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Comment by squokko | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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