The title says it all. I was aiming for FAANG and got into Meta and BCG. I never thought consulting would even be an option for DS (always thought there were only hiring MBAs). I'm just wondering what do people think about DS from consulting in general and more specifically in BCG. Do you think they are on par with tech/FAANG? TC:150K #datascience #bcg
Why would you choose BCG over Meta?
To have exposure across different industries
Good point. In tech companies, DS focus on driving product decisions through experiments. Another type of DS role focused on building scalable ML solutions and researching new methods. So this one might be similar to consulting except consulting doesn't focus on scalability. A major difference I see between consulting and tech is: 1. Consulting is mostly short term engagements, building offline models. Tech wants to build products which can be used by millions of users. 2. Consulting has more stakeholder management and is more hierarchical in nature. Tech is flat hierarchy so there's a lot of influencing without authority. 3. Consulting has less freedom to take risks. Tech is more flexible with risk, driving big bets, innovative ideas etc. Although it does come with accountability. 4. Consulting offers more stakeholder management and exposure to know different industries, unlike tech. 5. Tech companies invest in internal tools and data quality. There are infra teams which build products to help engg and DS do their job well. Data is internal. Unlike consulting which often relies on data from clients, that can be crappy. This is obviously based off my experience so ymmv
You already know the answer.
You feel the work at Amazon is better than BCG? If so, how?
I may be biased, but it's based on my personal experience having come from the DS consulting world. The level of rigour placed behind consulting projects barely scratch the surface of real science work. Maybe it's just my team at Amazon is really good though, I'm not sure Amazon DS as a whole is brilliant.
In my opinion, consulting is more like doing ad-hoc things most of the time while in a software company, you also need to care about maintenance and long-term performance. Yes, you can have exposure in many industries. But would you become an expert in one or more of them? That may be the key question.
Not on par, but it's a good feeder into a PM role in FAANG, big tech and top startups.
OP isn't a management consultant, they're a DS/DA; second class citizens at MBB
So is DS at Meta tho. PM is an internal transfer away
DS in consulting companies is useless and you are anyway backend for the MBA consultants in BCG.
Can’t speak for other consulting companies but that’s not how it works at BCG X
I used to work at one of the big 4 as a consultant, doing projects and similar work. I would highly advice not to join bcg unless you are ready to be a consultant first, ds second. 3 things. Consulting often lack of technical depth. Projects often have aggressive timeline/budget constraints. This leads to rushed products and bad code. You will have to look for your own projects. Not sure what it was like in BCG, you will probably spend a lot of time networking to get on good project. If you are not good at that, you may very well end up getting fired for no finding your own project. Conflict of interest. Often times, the interest of the Consulting firm is not aligned with the customers . Get ready to lie and talk about none sense if needed. One more, if you are not don't want to be a consultant , you promotion path is extremely limited.
Agreed. Consultants are only brought in when the sponsor is behind and is facing pressure. Your sales person will have no qualms in committing on your behalf as you get killed for delivering a 3 month project in a month. Know what you are getting into.
DS in tech from my observation just analyzes experiments of feature releases/ab tests.
May be size of data and kind of tools they deal with . Most fortune 1000 companies don’t have ML infrastructure or DS ecosystem. All they use is some ETL tool, BI tool , and few python scripts with basic algorithms. In consulting business problems are complex but DS work is very primitive since they work with different clients and most fortune companies suck with data and ML infrastructure. In consulting people loves PPT over code/maths. Fortune 500 companies hire VP of AI and outsource all work to consultants who has no idea what to solve and even if it matters . Most of projects end up being reporting and Analytics projects
Meta meta and meta. Other companies pretend to be tech companies. If you want steak, go to a steak house. BCG is not a steakhouse
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Your TC at BCG is an answer to your question itself
I got the same offer at Meta. TC is not everything. My question is about the work
Meta offered you 150k??