Hacker News Reader

Comment by Taikhoom10 | Hacker News Reader

I think generalizations are usually bad. I genuinely am weirded out by management's fascination with consultants. It really is about incentives, and consultants usually do not have the right ones, at least the big ones. Also, there are management which feel like companies always need change, but really you have to examine the competitve position within the broader industry not just a vacumm. Things honestly stay the same for a long time. IBM had more revenue then Microsoft all the way up to the early 2010s. Switching costs are powerful - https://s-1.vercel.app/posts/why-dropbox-is-a-obvious-pe-tar...

I think a key takeaway is the human nature to constantly act, and not just sit and do nothing. Lot's of value in sitting around, especially in investing.

View on HN

In my experience senior management hires management consultants to tell them to do what they wanted to do anyway but now they can blame the consultants.

The two consults in Office Space absolutely nailed it.

yeah that's fair, Office Space is goated.

Yes. Especially true when the results are unpopular, and contrary to the internal message.

“Accenture tells us we have 50% more middle managers than our peers” or “Bain tells us our customers don’t like us despite the internal CSAT scoring”

It seems that management in most organisations can't believe something unless they've paid vast sums for it. So they can't believe their own staff if they say X, even if it's right, because they haven't paid enough for it. Then the consultant comes along, interviews the staff, finds they say X, tell the client, charge buckets for it, and are believed. Weird human behaviour...

disclaimer: ex management consultant

I see it often at work. I say something and it's met with "you have a very bad attitude". They hear the exact same thing (ex. "we should see where our responsibility begins and ends according to the contract made with the client, and tell them to fuck off otherwise") from someone else, and then it's the next big thing.

> So they can't believe their own staff if they say X, even if it's right, because they haven't paid enough for it.

Smooth, but deep burn. Masterfully done!

Almost like a Veblen good lol. The quality is seen as higher because price is higher.

the perception is that employees have an incentive to lie: to cover their ass, to cover their incompetence, to be or stay lazy, to ensure their bonuses are better, etc.

in theory, an expensive outside consultant does not have those incentives: they are being paid 800/hr, have no dog in any fight, have a fixed contract and no reason to worry about getting promoted or fired next cycle, and have already been pre-vetted for expertise.

if I do not have faith in my goober, fork-and-spoon operator employees, I pay for these folks to validate the approach. that's not incompetence, that's due diligence.

it's not my money, nor my department -- it's the shareholders -- and I need to convince them that I've done all I can to confirm we need to invest X million in initiative Y.

however in practice consulting falls victim to plenty of bad behaviors, rent seeking, and risks, too

> It really is about incentives, and consultants usually do not have the right ones

As a consultant myself, I don't get it, that might be true for management consultants, but not for technical ones.

As a software engineering one, there hasn't been a single time where I wasn't among the top performers after a month.

My incentive was always to do a good showing so they may call you for other projects in the future.

yeah but are you independent?

Yes

TFA surely refers to management consultants, your parent looks like it as well (when they talk about management obsession with consultants). Technical consultants are mostly OK if their skill is not your main line of business, you just need a few of them or you need them temporarily. Companies employing thousands of software engineers or other professionals from consultancy firms only demonstrate their inability to plan, hire and organize people. It usually correlates with companies employing swats of management consultants.

The term most people here would use for your job is “contractor”, not “consultant.”

A consultant, in most people’s minds, is someone they would consult with, who would tell them what to do, in an advisory capacity; not someone who would actually do any kind of work. (In other words, a management consultant.)

The only people who use the term differently are consulting firms themselves, because they think “consultant” sounds fancier (and worth paying more for!) than “contractor.”

Maybe you're right, my language has no such distinction (Italian) it's one term.

wouldn't that just be: "subappaltatore - una persona incaricata di svolgere un lavoro"?

Subappaltatore means subcontractor. When a contractor hires a second contractor to do part of, or all, the work.

But appaltatore isn't strictly a contractor in the generic term either, its mostly related to win a "gara d'appalto", so winning a tender.

Generalizations can be bad, yes. Everyone knows about management consultants ruining companies and governments, contributing to the opioid crisis, etc. But what else do they do?

Let’s crowdsource examples of management consultants delivering a huge amount of value to a company or society in a way that the company couldn’t have accomplished without them.

I’ll start:

sent you a email :)

i was a management consultant.

sometimes, employees are bad at their jobs, or organizations are unable to solve their own problems. people who have no long term loyalty or political agency within the organization can help resolve internal issues, provide external validation and new perspectives, and solve problems.

I tire of the snide arrogance of people like you; you think you can solve everything if you cared to. not every organization can afford to hire people as amazing and all knowing as you.

making talented people available on short contracts, for employers with terrible reputations who cannot hire the right people able to deal with ambiguity and short timelines can be a win win arrangement for both sides.

Are there issues across the industry, including misaligned incentives? absolutely. but that isn't a reason to dismiss the entire industry out of hand.

perhaps we should be equally dismissive of all software devs given the sheer amount of terrible software and predatory revenue models? or are we also going to blame some other faceless group for that as well?

Nah management consultants are leeches. If they really thought their clients could turn it around with One Simple Trick (that only 22yo ivy league alums could see) they would close up shop and move into PE.

No defintley I would love to be consulatants, I think they can create value, It just depends.

Software devs have actually hard skills and don’t charge $1,000 an hour to develop a PowerPoint.

Why do only management consultants defend management consultants? Why don’t employees, C-suites, taxpayers, watchdogs, or anyone else ever sing their praises?

I also asked for an example of a good consulting project with real ROI. Please share one.

> Are there issues across the industry, including misaligned incentives? absolutely. but that isn't a reason to dismiss the entire industry out of hand.

Misaligned incentives are alone enough reason to dismiss the entire industry.

But more widely if an organization cannot manage itself it has no business being an organization. It has to either go bust, or have senior management let go.

By hiring management consultants the senior management is acknowledging it cannot run the organization.

Can you give an example, understandable to hackers, of how you fixed an organizational problem? Genuinely interested :)

Generalizations are heuristics we build upon our experiences. Not 100% correct but a good mental model to adopt situationally. You are shooting down the whole notion of generationalizion without much backing.

You gotta provide why it's bad instead of whataboutism direction you took.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com