I have a couple friends working in MBB, and I really like what they do from what I’ve heard and the travelling lifestyle. Even though what they can share is actually pretty limited due to the nature if the industry. I am thinking of going back to B school during the downturn to make a career switch to consulting. However, the price tag of b school is very high. Thus, I do a lot more research on Manangement consulting and I found the applying the frameworks is pretty much all its interview is about. If it’s such by the book practice, wouldn’t it be easy to be threaten by new AI technology? Since I am not in the industry, I wonder whether there’a someone can give me some advices? And why the industry can sustain such a high profit with only providing advice and not execution? #consulting #career #mckinsey #bcg #bain #mba #ai #machinelearning
Every job will be disrupted by AI. Hard to think of one that’s not. Consultants won’t be replaced because it’s a ring of circlejerks. People leave MBB to high level c level positions, and then hire MBB to work on stuff for them. That’s the circle that money flows around.
Consultants will use AI. They will not be replaced by AI. If you strip away the fluff, MBB is a contractor that provides clients with temp workers who look great on paper (young/energetic/willing to work long hours, suit and tie, top university grads). Clients are unable to hire these workers as FTE because the client cannot match what MBB provides: - home office in a top tier city - large network of colleagues of similar stature - eyes on the entire industry instead of a single company - ex. if you're AT&T and want some analysis, wouldn't it be great if the analysts had prior experience solving the same problem for Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile
I disagree that client cannot hire consultants as FTE. I’d say they simply don’t need to. A lot of companies don’t need full time strategy team. Companies that are sizable, like amazon, facebook, or google, would have such teams. Just like m&a.
It’s all a hr utilisation of the FTE. If you don’t need a FT strategy team then why bother.
OP - while the framework may sound simple, complications and circumstances each company face are very unique. I’m not a strategy consultant and I’m more on cash mgmt side so bit more focus on implementation. So I may see more details on how companies are different from one another. If full artificial intelligence, not machine learning, becomes democratized, meaning if a robot that actually thinks like (or better than) human, then yes a lot of jobs will disappear. However, management function is too complex to cram into current machine learning algorithm. Natural language isn’t something we can utilize computers with so easily.
How about the subject expertise? Like business knowledge we learned from classes in MBA program. Could they be easily incorporated into a democratized AI or machine learning program?
First I wouldn’t call what MBA teaches you as expertise :) I think you want to distinguish AI vs ML. ML is a complex model that can do a lot of things but still a model. You need to think about what the inputs would look like. Inputs need to be standardized and controlled. AI is like a person but much faster and doesn’t sleep. I believe what you’re asking is “would specialized management function be replaced by machine soon”. Given that management is within realm of art than calculation, I wouldn’t say it would be easy to create scenarios for all possible outcomes and standardize all inputs we need to calculate whatever mgmt wants to. Hope it answers your question
I agree with @tBzB48. In case you’re not familiar with the RPA (robotics and process automation), RPA can substitute very dumb/manual work done by human being and do better. We sell these implementation services. We’re not replaced by it. The more democratized the technology becomes, more emphasis we can have on intangible/conceptual problems, such as priority setting for markets and products, management discipline, incentive structure, etc. With my limited experience in consulting, associate level work such as interviews, data and number crunching, is more of key inputs rather than deliverable itself. Creating analytics template and feeding data are relatively easy. Interpreting the data to extract meaningful insight, getting buy-ins from stakeholders, aligning interests through our internal sponsor are what materialize the value, not the pretty visualizations. Technology will free more time for consultants.
So what you mean is that the core competencies of a management consultant will not be replaced by AI or Robotics? Can I say that consultants are becoming more like a sales person in the end?
Yes for the first question. Not sure why you would think consultants would become sales person. Don’t get me wrong. Higher ups in consulting do work like salesmen/women. Without sales you can’t stay as equity partner for long. I wouldn’t say the entire consulting firm would turn into sales since even when the technology would improve the cost structure, time, and effort to deliver the service, we would still have to do it.
I hope I don’t sound like a snob. If I do, please forgive me. It’s not my intention
No, absolutely not. I appreciate your perspectives and I believe it’s valuable for me. :)
Less consultants, but consultants will still exist because people want consultants so a firm can blame the consultants when things do not go well, but claim credit when things go well.
I don't think AI will replace consultants because the things we do are not solely based on analysis. A lot of the time, you weigh your analysis against what the client perceives as the right choice and you approach each client differently depending on their preconceived notions, how your analysis differs from them, and how good your relationship is with the client. General purpose AI can do that but I also feel like many clients will want to interact with a human so they can do things like tell us to do what is obviously wrong and purposefully waste their money due to politics. It's harder to say that the robot was wrong. Lmao
I worked at M before switching to software, from what I see, a lot of the value consulting provide is actually on a human level; Executives look for connections and help in uncertain times, they want an overall human perspective on the industry and market which partners accumulated over many years working with lots of clients. So I think it's a people business before it's a data business.
Your smart AI device from world's best companies Google and Amazon can't have a continuous conversation yet. AI can't replace a receptionist at this time so imagine the time it would take to replace a consultant.
Layoffs
2d
39677
Google CFO confirms 'large-scale' layoffs (Apr 17)
India
Yesterday
1624
Lost respect for Modiji
Tech Industry
Yesterday
5538
Google doing more layoffs, restructuring including country moves
Tech Industry
Yesterday
361
Chances of meta clearing E5 with screwing up one coding one round and acing all other
Software Engineering Career
4d
33467
Offer Evaluation: Meta v NVIDIA v Coinbase
You asked very good questions. Consulting is constantly threatened / disrupted by all sorts of things and AI is one of them. If you read some of the articles by HBR and the book by Duff McDonald etc. you’ll see that management consulting has evolved a ton up to today and will continue to evolve in order to fit market demand. MBB added execution/implementation aspects in more recent years.
Will the business model get changed or the pool shrink over time?
Business model constantly get changed. Not sure about the pool shrink as the person mentioned below there’ll always be a need for consultants even if corporates grow their own internal strategy teams.