The core difference I've seen is that FDEs sell a product whereas consultants sell billable hours.

The Big 4 incentive is to stay as long as possible, build custom code that only they can maintain, upcharge on maintenance while outsourcing it to developing countries.

FDEs sell a product (Foundry, Gotham, GPT, Claude, Databricks). They deploy their platform to solve your problem, then move on. The incentive is to get it working fast, not to embed themselves.

Also, the talent bar is drastically different. Palantir/OpenAI hire top 1% engineers. Accenture... doesn't.