Do management consulting companies like McKinsey, bcg, pwc pay more than fang? Do they need MBA degree? Are there any other companies paying more than fang.
I came from management consulting to Amazon. The misconception about becoming a partner in 8 years is very deceiving. That’s the picture they paint to get you work like dogs for 10 years and miss everything social and family. And if you finally make it there, then you have to meet sales quota every year to survive a pay of $1Mil or so. I joined as L6 PM after 1.5 years in Consulting. My pay was 70% more than my EY Pay and 60% more than the McKinsey offer. And all the offers were in strategy team of each concurring firm so essentially the best pay you can get. At that point I had 7 years of industry experience and an MBA. I had talked to the Sr. Managers in EY, they make less than what an experienced L6 PM makes at Amazon. I have many such cases I can quote. The carrot 🥕 of being a partner is deceiving. In terms of career growth, if you spend that many years in FANG, you can easily be a senior executive in any mid size firm.
Yep. Former MC here and the odds of becoming a partner are 1% if not less. To become a partner, you need to make a business case that you specialize in a lucrative area where you can sell work that can bring consistent revenue year after year to justify your crazy ass salary. We call it a value proposition. That specialization shouldn’t overlap with what another current partner is doing and if so be prepared for some major politics and cock blocking your path up the chain for fear you might take sales/client revenue from another more senior partner.
It’s super political and tough. Most consultants leave by choice. Tech has consistently high salaries for more people. Consulting is bottom heavy.
My best friend’s dad is a partner at McKinsey and based in the stuff he told me, what you guys said above is generally true. One thing I should add is that for those rockstar young partners, a lot of them already come from wealth and power, which allows them to make it rain at such a young age. It’s no surprise that his uncle is a CEO of a F500 biotech firm and his dad is focuses on pharmaceuticals.
At McK u can ride from business analyst to engagement manager by completing just 3 engagements if you are good at working with clients. After making it to engagement manager if u dont want to work like a horse and eat shitty airport meals, you can get a job at any big investment bank or hi-tech firm and enter at sr. Manager level. Conclusion, it is worth the learning and experience for 2-3 yrs post graduation
MCkinsey / Bain / BCG is only good pay ($2m+) once you make partner / Sr partner, until then you will be worked to death and miss all your children’s births and what little family you have left
Ex McKinsey here. Sr. partners make a ton, but your 13 yrs of life is gone behind the fight to become a Sr which is not easy. It is not an easy life (atleast I felt) being away from family, but learning is good.
Former consultant and yep, a consulting career is accelerated and we call it “dog years” because of the scope, scale, and speed of growth. It’s a brutal lifestyle. The upside is you have excellent exit opportunities and you’ll see 27-29 year olds hitting Director of Product and leapfrogging others in their age bracket rank and salary wise because they groom us for executive leadership and presence the moment we arrive.
If you suck, they “coach you out” (read: fire you) but help place you in a client so if you’re successful and one day become an executive you’ll throw business back their way aka hire them. There is a HUGE consulting alumni network for all the firms that helps with post career placement
Yep former consultant here from the “big 4” vouching for consulting as a career/comp accelerator. It does this...at an astronomical cost to your personal life.
Yeah, um, guys there are strategy consultants from a lot of UG schools outside the top 10 - especially regional offices (so not NY/SF/LA). Even in those major offices you have a bunch of kids from non extremely-top-tier schools make it.
@Amazon.. They're exaggerating, but only a bit. Not every project is that intense. Some are only 8-9am til 8-10pm Mon, Tues and Weds, then a shorter day Thurs then a standard 8-9 hour day on Fri at the home office and no weekend work apart from prep.
EDIT: by the way, I fuckin love blind. where else can you have conversations with people at the best firms in some of the most prestigious industries? it's incredible.
Looks like even if we get MBA from top school like UCB, and have 10 years of tech experience it is difficult (nearly impossible) to get 1M Tc from management consulting companies. What would be an average start pay considering MBA from top school +10 years of software development experience
The problem with IB is that too many people see it as the "IB Analyst" thing. Investment banks have plenty of other roles. For example Quants, who neither use PowerPoint nor sleep under their desks.
From a guy in finance, there's no way ever in hell an intern made a mil and everyone 10m+ in IB Best paid in finance go to the few incredible hedge funds if your comp is indexed on a perf bonus. Unless your mate is that a one in a billion who invented the most profitable strat ever
Haha. On 200k is only about 144k after taxes. 50k of that is going to rent now you're down to 96k. You have all that traffic, you will never own a house and you will find it impossible find a girlfriend. More money does != more money. Nerdwallet.com cost of living calculator.
It's probably news to you but you can move to and retire in a LCOL area, you know? Great job owning a house and paying down a 30 year $250k mortgage, I'd rather save up those $250k in 3-4 years but you do you.
You've clearly never lived in the Bay Area, you can find a place close to work for <$30k / year.
COL calculators are misleading because they assume you're an all-American choad living the all-American choad lifestyle in each location. Who in SF or NYC even wants a multistory 3000 sq ft house with a garage, lawn, backyard and 2 new cars?
Investing 50% of your annual post-tax income on $200k will still amount to a larger annual investment than saving 70% on $100k. Plus you're living in an awesome city instead of Shithole, USA
Sub $1500 rent with roommates and your own room is easily doable with a <15 min commute to SF FiDi, Midtown Manhattan or (easily) downtown Seattle. There are studios in Midtown and the Mission for around $2k
EDIT: you can save up to 70% of $200k post tax in SF or NYC if single. Even more with a working partner and no kids. $4k living expenses is easy with roommates. I average well under $4k per month with quarterly international vacations and am saving over 60% of my post tax income, living near Midtown Manhattan
Just a note.. MBB absolutely would consider you with a masters for a BA/A/AC role. Have a few friends who lucked out of recruiting then did a Masters at a top university to break into the entry level class.
It's an expensive way to get a second chance at undergrad recruiting though.
Sounds like you got shafted by BCG/your office/your mentors. My experience at the firm has been a bit different.
Hours: Same as yours Travel: Similar, but with more choice Projects: I've worked on mostly Tech projects. Launching a digital org within a F500, Launching a blockchain startup, Launching a payment startup,...., standard BCG crap (PMO, Offshoring, etc.) Exits: I've seen a couple exits to PM, 1 exit to SWE, countless exits to strategy at FAANG Colleagues: A lot more ADC in generalist roles (Phds, JDs, etc) with technical degrees, and A LOT more technical staff in targeted roles (PM, SWE,Scrum Masters, DBAs, etc. at Gamma/Platinion/DV)
Overall: Experience was tough, but i'm exciting to FAANG w/ a raise so can't be too angry
as a former MC, I agree that the tech lifestyle is superior to the MC grind. Management consulting is much more unforgiving and the different firms are the same no matter where you go. Tech companies have cultures with more variety and flexibility all around to support a healthy WLB
Disagree with corporate law. Long hours are siloed into banking/finance departments. Folks in other departments of BigLaw firms barely pull over 55-60 hours a week - pretty sweet gig for $205k first year out of law school.
These numbers are fairly spot on! After 2-3 years as partner election, they go ~1.5M+ That said, I’m walking away from that money! The hours/travel not worth it.. Will be joining Tech (PM role at FANG)...
Every person that cant make it into Uber tries to comfort themselves by blaming culture. You havnt seen the world enough if you think Ubers culture is any diff than the rest interms of sexism.
I’ve worked at FANG companies and have friends at each of them. Uber is no more sexist than any of the others. All large companies have pockets of bad behavior and others that are shining examples of good behavior. Uber is no different.
Given how some of the tech companies' stock has been growing over the last 5yrs (NFLX 10x, NVIDIA 18x, FB 4x) and the relatively sane hours, I'd say tech pays more than consulting. It's still way below what top performers at quant/hf firms get though.
Source: TC 420k with 6yrs of experience. Never worked more than 45hrs a week in my life.
HF is Hedge Fund. Quant is an abridgment for quantitative analysts (Physics/Math PhDs modeling different investment strategies like using statistical arbitrage).
The very best at my age are comfortably pulling in 7 figures.
Airbnb pays more, I’ve heard a few other pre-IPO companies pay more too. Median L5 here is somewhere around 370-450k and increasing yearly due to refreshers (150-300k yearly)
But - anything above 200-215k is paper money. Which could be good or bad depending on your expectations for what will happen at IPO time.
I've worked for Lehman, Google, VMW, and startups. Pay is a formula that works out to profit / perceived value contribution - opportunity cost. Doesn't matter where you work. Choose a dominant winner if you want to be paid, help create one if you want to have fun.
Can you explain this formula more? I would have guessed profit * perceived contribution percent. Why are you dividing and why opportunity cost is in it?
Traditionaly, companies must earn a profit to stay er, profitable. This profit is divided amongst employees and shareholders. Employees are roughly paid in line with the relative percentage influence they have on the success of the firm. This is a fraction of profit, not a multiple. Opportunity cost is the cost of switching jobs. Your employer factors this into your pay increases to increase their profit.
I came from MBB. Paid me okay (straight out of college it’s sub 100k - not SWE level), groomed my presence etc well, I was counseled out due to not being committed to core industries enough in a tough business year. I was mad at the time and would now make the same decision in the partners’ place.
I don’t regret it. MBB network/experience were my B-school. Should pay dividends later. In the meantime, this gig at FB pays well enough that I wouldn’t want 2x the work for 2x the money as Partner anyway.
I'm gonna say.. yes it is but it's unlikely. The only way to stay technical is to build stuff, contribute to open source and stay up to date on technical developments. But.. when working 60-70 hour weeks + travel, you really only have the weekend to do that.
For most people, they'd rather relax on the weekend than dive into making $randomApp2.0$ or contributing to React or reading up on new JS frameworks. I mean some people clearly can commit themselves to staying relevant in a field (John Legend for example), but it's highly unlikely.
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It’s super political and tough. Most consultants leave by choice. Tech has consistently high salaries for more people. Consulting is bottom heavy.
one of the ED/Ds I'm close to is ~31, he made $780k last year. Case in point.
If you suck, they “coach you out” (read: fire you) but help place you in a client so if you’re successful and one day become an executive you’ll throw business back their way aka hire them. There is a HUGE consulting alumni network for all the firms that helps with post career placement
@Amazon.. They're exaggerating, but only a bit. Not every project is that intense. Some are only 8-9am til 8-10pm Mon, Tues and Weds, then a shorter day Thurs then a standard 8-9 hour day on Fri at the home office and no weekend work apart from prep.
EDIT: by the way, I fuckin love blind. where else can you have conversations with people at the best firms in some of the most prestigious industries? it's incredible.
Best paid in finance go to the few incredible hedge funds if your comp is indexed on a perf bonus.
Unless your mate is that a one in a billion who invented the most profitable strat ever
You've clearly never lived in the Bay Area, you can find a place close to work for <$30k / year.
Investing 50% of your annual post-tax income on $200k will still amount to a larger annual investment than saving 70% on $100k. Plus you're living in an awesome city instead of Shithole, USA
Sub $1500 rent with roommates and your own room is easily doable with a <15 min commute to SF FiDi, Midtown Manhattan or (easily) downtown Seattle. There are studios in Midtown and the Mission for around $2k
EDIT: you can save up to 70% of $200k post tax in SF or NYC if single. Even more with a working partner and no kids. $4k living expenses is easy with roommates. I average well under $4k per month with quarterly international vacations and am saving over 60% of my post tax income, living near Midtown Manhattan
It's an expensive way to get a second chance at undergrad recruiting though.
TC for undergrad is ~90s.
Sounds like you got shafted by BCG/your office/your mentors. My experience at the firm has been a bit different.
Hours: Same as yours
Travel: Similar, but with more choice
Projects: I've worked on mostly Tech projects. Launching a digital org within a F500, Launching a blockchain startup, Launching a payment startup,...., standard BCG crap (PMO, Offshoring, etc.)
Exits: I've seen a couple exits to PM, 1 exit to SWE, countless exits to strategy at FAANG
Colleagues: A lot more ADC in generalist roles (Phds, JDs, etc) with technical degrees, and A LOT more technical staff in targeted roles (PM, SWE,Scrum Masters, DBAs, etc. at Gamma/Platinion/DV)
Overall: Experience was tough, but i'm exciting to FAANG w/ a raise so can't be too angry
After 2-3 years as partner election, they go ~1.5M+
That said, I’m walking away from that money! The hours/travel not worth it..
Will be joining Tech (PM role at FANG)...
Source: TC 420k with 6yrs of experience. Never worked more than 45hrs a week in my life.
The very best at my age are comfortably pulling in 7 figures.
But - anything above 200-215k is paper money. Which could be good or bad depending on your expectations for what will happen at IPO time.
I don’t regret it. MBB network/experience were my B-school. Should pay dividends later. In the meantime, this gig at FB pays well enough that I wouldn’t want 2x the work for 2x the money as Partner anyway.
For most people, they'd rather relax on the weekend than dive into making $randomApp2.0$ or contributing to React or reading up on new JS frameworks. I mean some people clearly can commit themselves to staying relevant in a field (John Legend for example), but it's highly unlikely.
https://www.paysa.com/salaries/cruise-automation--engineer
"Better than FANG" lmao.
even then this is out of date because there are less than 20 data points including ones before Softbank