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Comment by roadside_picnic | Hacker News Reader

The role of McKinsey and co has always been reputation laundering, not actual consulting.

Companies bring in McKinsey and pay the big bucks so that when something goes wrong or in unpopular they can point the finger and McKinsey. McKinsey consultants are paid to say the things that corporate leadership doesn't want to say.

The entire role of a consultant is the create theater to present the illusion that they are doing serious "business". Look how professional they are? If they get it wrong, then maybe nobody can get it right. Worst case we can shake our finger at them and frown, can you believe how they handled those layoffs? ... then call them back next month when it needs to be done again.

Everything goes right? Well, what great leadership this corporation has. Either way McKinsey gains a good reputation around other corporate leaders in need of these services.

AI is not replacing that particular service anytime soon.

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Hehe, agreed. In Germany there is a saying that goes somewhat like this: "A consultant is a person you give your watch so that you can ask them for the time."

... and the other people in the organisation will now agree that the time is what your watch says.

Don't forget cross-industry collusion. It can be illegal to form organized cartels, but it's totally fine to listen to what your consultant says, even if they got it by talking to their other clients.

This must still be legally considered collusion, right? Maybe it’s not totally fine but it’s so hard to prove that they go ahead and do it anyway?

> AI is not replacing that particular service anytime soon.

Fully agree, it's more likely that the outcome will be "We hired McKinsey, they now use some intelligent software to improve their analysis"

Everything else will result in "What do you mean, we paid you money to lead and you handed the destiny of the whole company to some generic software?!"

In my experience it is often subtly simpler than this.

Rising to the top of a company is rarely the meritocracy we'd like to think, (or, at least, the merit required to rise is different than the merit required to lead a company successfully). Often people rise to the top who don't want to make decisions, don't have a vision and very much are used to leading by consensus.

So there is not a masterful plan to avoid blame for the difficult thing they know they need to do, they just don't know what to do - they are incapable of making decisions.

Scott Adams has a hilarious way to describe consultants thay says something similar: https://youtu.be/Ag9mo58sxbQ?t=2822

>The role of McKinsey and co has always been reputation laundering, not actual consulting.

Reminds me of why companies choose penetration testing services/audits from some specific well known companies, but also only want to pay for the bare minimum amount of testing. They want the reputation of the label that they passed an audit from X company, they don't actually care about their security.

>McKinsey consultants are paid to say the things that corporate leadership doesn't want to say.

More like they're paid to say the things corporate leadership doesn't want to hear from its own employees. They already know it, but they just pay McK to have external confirmation, to reinforce what they already know.

>McKinsey consultants are paid to say the things that corporate leadership doesn't want to say.

>AI is not replacing that particular service anytime soon.

what are you talking about?! That is the prime service for AI to replace.

What, you don't like our decision!? But the AI says we should fire you all, can't argue with AI folks, it's super smart.

hell, they just need a ChatGPT template that makes screenshots that says what you want ChatGPT to say for you and they're good to go. They don't even really need to use the AI. McKinsey does not look good in a world of AI.

What a hot take! If you're in an organization where leadership 'points the finger' at McKinsey to cast blame for an unpopular decision, imagine what sorts of decisions they would have made without the consultants!

Consultants are hired to improve decision quality. They do that through a combination of analysis, experience, and industry connections. The work product is rarely 'powerpoints'. The work product is the actual work, which entails people doing research, making decisions, executing on them, and measuring results.

At any rate, I don't disagree with you that consultants aren't going anywhere. This post is an ad for an immature AI service that makes a bunch of claims about how they've solved for hallucinations and knowledge cutoffs in order to take down McKinsey. If they had solves for those problems, they'd be wasting their effort building a replacement for consulting firms.

I'm sorry but how does a fresh out of college senior consultant gain such amazing experience?

I've been unfortunate enough to work with 3/4 of the big four (senior enough to at the table, not senior enough to call bullshit). Sales pitch is all partners; older people, lots of industry experience in relevant areas, great pitch. But, come time to deliver and an early 20-something shows up. So either its all covering your ass, or its just recycling reports from a shelf, either way there's no experience involved

Came here to say this. Management already knows what needs to be done.

This seems like an often repeated myth but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Isn’t it just much simpler to accept that they indeed provide value in making good judgements? Instead of this more contrived explanation.

Many McKinsey go on to be executives in companies which means they had - at some point - the skills or judgement required to drive companies.

The reason why so many people believe this is because they have directly experienced situations where these consultants come in, understand less than the people who work there, and do a below-average job. It’s the idea that these consultants are hired for their capabilities that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

I understand where you are coming from. Here you have two misaligned incentives.

You have people making coming from the outside, making decisions that would affect rank and file in a company. I think its natural for the rank and file to be biased towards believing in their own skills and dismissing outsiders.

Why would shareholders, the board and the CEO waste so much money on paying consultancies when the only value is being able to pass blame? Isn't it simply easier to believe that consultancies indeed provide valuable judgements and the price paid is worth it?

Accountability sinks is the buzzword we are looking at here. It's to do something that is not easy to do in an organization due to major breaks in the current status quo.

The risk of doing one thing and complaints hampering the progress there is often too high which is why you give authority to a third party who will just do it regardless of feedback. One time breaks are necessary sometimes but can also be misused a lot for things employees want to do anyway. It's up to leadership to identify what is necessary and not generally possible with the current crew.

This doesn’t check out. The org hierarchy exists and accountability is placed at the right level in the hierarchy.

The term accountability sink was originally intended to describe how bureaucracies cover their asses from customers, regulators and employees, but certainly not from the company owners.

You are assuming that decisions to hire consultants are driven by merit alone, that the outcome invariably matches what was desired, and dismissing any experience to the contrary as sour grapes. None of this is reasonable.

Please understand that I'm literally debating against a conspiracy theory. Sure some times they are not hired for merit but do you think all this is a pyramid scheme where massive amounts of money are wasted for no real value?

I'm the unreasonable one?

> I'm literally debating against a conspiracy theory.

You’re debating against things people have directly experienced for themselves. You asked:

> Isn’t it just much simpler to accept that they indeed provide value in making good judgements?

It is not simpler to accept that when you have seen with your own two eyes multiple cases where they definitely were not making good judgements.

> Why would shareholders, the board and the CEO waste so much money on paying consultancies when the only value is being able to pass blame?

Management does it in large part to provide external validation (most importantly to the board and shareholders) of the decisions they sought to take anyway.

The board and shareholders accept it because the external validation works exactly the way management intends it to. (There's also cases where using independent consultants as part of some process is a compliance checkbox thing, and in those cases they are used for that specific reason.)

Critical distance is probably what you are alluding to.

Naked Capitalism had a good take on the impact of AI on McKinsey:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/08/wall-street-journal-...

I really don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but it honestly feels like a pyramid scheme. The MBAs/consultants help out the MBAs/consultants. Their effectiveness isn't super important. It's very rare I see a coworker who is actually effective get promoted––it's always the ones who are loudest, steal credit from others, and who are really social/fun to be around.

Why would shareholders and board agree to pay massive amounts of money for such a minimal value - the ability to pass blame?

Because as soon as you're 2-3 levels up it's all politics, no content. All information comes from people who know better than you. All execution is done by people who are better at what the company does than you are. The "base" level of playing politics, the table stakes, is to never get blamed. And there's regular fuckups who need guilty parties. Look up the 3 envelopes parable.

Let's put it this way: consultants provide a new envelope every 6 months or so.

> Many McKinsey go on to be executives in companies

Many, nay most, executives at companies couldn't run a lemonade stand. In the real world having the job title doesn't mean they have any skills or judgement let alone those required to drive companies.

This is incredibly naive.

Startups, YC, pretty much all of Silicon Valley exists because management at established companies are useless.

Jeff Bezos would be scrubbing toilets for a living if Walmart, Target or any of the big retailers had managment with 3 braincells between them in the 90's.

Or that they were hired by former mcKinsey consultants turned executives.

That’s the most egregious part imho, how when consultants get fired, the firm gives all the help it can so they can land a good job in a decision-making role at a potential client.

Have you heard of any company working as hard as mcKinsey, bcg, etc to help people they just fired?

This is not true factually and not true simply because you need the best person to do the job. Why would I hire an inferior candidate when I can hire a much better one that will make the company grow and make me wealthy as a consequence?

> Why would I hire an inferior candidate when I can hire a much better one that will make the company grow and make me wealthy as a consequence?

There are plenty of reasons why an individual's goals aren't aligned with the org they're in. The larger the org, the more reasons there are.

For instance, you could be looking for loyal allies, rather than competent competitors. Or you could be looking for someone that will just repeat what you say as an exterior pov, rather than do "the best work" and potentially contradict you in front of your superiors. Or you could be looking for someone to take the fall for a botched project of yours. Or you could be looking to hire a relative or a friend of your boss in order to curry their favour. There are plenty more.

As for the relation between making the company healthy and profitable and having a successful carreer ; except for founders and a few early employees, it's usually more profitable to look for individual advancement within the company (promotions, raises, etc) rather than to expect the company's growth to benefit you.

Of course, employees are supposed to have some deontology, but you can't expect that all employees in a company fit that ideal.

>As for the relation between making the company healthy and profitable and having a successful carreer ; except for founders and a few early employees, it's usually more profitable to look for individual advancement within the company (promotions, raises, etc) rather than to expect the company's growth to benefit you.

That's not the case for people at the top with extremely high salaries tied to stock. Which explains why their salaries are high.

In general you are not refuting my main point and you are bringing edge cases which I agree can exist. But in general the incentives are aligned to hire a CEO best fit for the job and not some one you know.

> In general you are not refuting my main point

I don't care about refuting a theoretical point.

Dissemination of big three alumni into companies, and their use of the services of their former colleagues is a thing I have witnessed, both from the client side, and from the experience from friends at these firms when they left.

It's simply the way these firms work: associates cultivate long-term business/support relations with executives, and they progress in the firm as these relations become more fruitful. It's honestly unsurprising that departing employees are seen as potential clients, and therefore that the firm helps them land as well as they can.

You are still not showing how the board members actively take suboptimal decisions that hurt shareholders.

You don't need board approval for every recruitment of an executive or every decision to hire a big-three contractor, at least not in large enough companies.

> Isn’t it just much simpler to accept that they indeed provide value in making good judgements?

I have hard time to accept that one, because there is little evidence of them providing good value judgements. They come in and leave companies in disordered state. I have not seen or heard of them come and fix stuff.

And from what I have seen, they do not have processes or knowledge to not create mess. Their actual changes are made by people who have very little experience and whose experience is limited to being parachuted somewhere and leaving in few months. Otherwise said, they do not even know impact of what they do.

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