10 years ago , it was considered very prestigious to work at McKinsey with top grads from prestigious schools networking their a** off to get there. Fast forward to 2024 , everyone I meet in the industry considers McKinsey a joke and consultants as headless chickens hired to just back up management’s decisions. Was this always the case or did rise of tech destroy McKinsey’s prestige Would love to hear from folks who work there about their perception of the industry and future of consulting #consulting
Nobody cares about BS big 4 tells to clients
I have never met a consultant (McKinsey or otherwise), who told me something smart and new. My coworkers from consulting are usually the most annoying bunch, who mostly excel at good optics.
Not McKinsey but I've worked with Bain and BCG folks. IMHO nothing changed on their profiles - they recruit the same type of people and the work they do is mostly unchanged over the years.
Btw you'll get a lot of biased responses from butthurt people that didn't get a job there or got told what to do by consultants.
MBB consulting is still considered very prestigious outside of tech circles. That said, I think McKinsey has taken a beating reputation-wise over the past few years. They've had multiple insider trading scandals, controversial work in Africa, Saudi Arabia, and other places, and bad press from work they did around opioids and prisons in the US. I see a lot less jokes and shade directed towards Bain and BCG comparatively.
Everything in your post is true all at the same time. That is, *there was no shift* McKinsey is a joke but also a cabal of upper class students " networking their a** off to get there" That's the way the world is most of the time. There's 10x the qualified people as MBB positions, so it becomes a rat's nest of ass licking and being in or out
Rich coming from meta lmao
Haha - yep
I don't think nothing has changed in broader industry. Consultancies are at root sales organizations, and the reason alumni of these firms did well in industry was that they were good salesmen and industry valued sales skills for internal promotion. I think American industry has pulled back a bit from its placing of sales skills on a pedestal. Recent highly publicized CEOs have had engineering backgrounds more than sales backgrounds. I see the sales-centric organization as a throwback to the 80s and 90s, and product-centric organizations as the new paradigm. McKinsey et al are just collateral damage in this trend.
McKinsey has a predatory business model like divorce attorneys. Necessary evil
Exactly my thoughts
Well the main problem is that they keep ruining companies, or companies they worked with keep getting on the news for all the wrong reasons. Perdue Pharma anyone? They still hire some of the smartest and hardest working college grads out in the market. A lot of consultants and even partners are great people. But the firm as a whole stands for nothing except making $.
Always been that way. Necessary evil