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I've been in one of the "Big 4" Consulting firms, and I can vouch for the article. As a "Senior" the Customer is charged 150-160$/hour and on top of that 25% fo
by tequila_shot 4y ago
I've been in one of the "Big 4" Consulting firms, and I can vouch for the article. As a "Senior" the Customer is charged 150-160$/hour and on top of that 25% for travel. The work that we did for these customers was lackluster. We used to come in as "experts", get all the technical work done from body shops in India and offshore. I was shocked to see that Customers just keep paying for these expensive services, and have no clue they are getting hoodwinked.
- harvey9 4y agoIn some cases the customer is just looking to put a veneer on a decision they already made. The big 4 name is what they're deliberately paying for.
- Loic 4y agoIn fact they have a name for it internally: "Cover my ass assignment". Just come to provide the results the boss wants to have for him to rubber stamp and justify the cost cutting.
- tyingq 4y ago"scapegoat as a service" is another common nickname for it.
- SoftTalker 4y agoYep. The ability to say "the design was vetted by McKinsey" is exactly the cover that they were being paid to provide.
- darkstar_16 4y agoThis. Big 4 consultants are also needed by law or by convention in a lot of places for auditing and such tasks. If it's for actual consultancy services, the decision has already been made. Having a Big 4 company "sign" and provide authority on a decision a manager has already made, just makes it an easier sell to his/her higher ups.
- yamtaddle 4y agoAnother rôle they play is a kind of out-in-the-open corporate espionage. You pay them to come in and tell you what the "best practices" are in your industry (i.e. effective new things your competitors have been doing since the last time they came to visit you—and they'll learn some new ones from you to tell your competitors, next time)
- _carbyau_ 4y agoOh, so they increase productivity across the industry, thus leading to wage rises for employees, increased margins for company profits and a higher GDP for the country.... right? (Off to dig my tongue out of the deep hole in my cheek.)
- yamtaddle 4y agoDidn't necessarily say it was bad. It's a bit like the Japanese R&D-pooling system post-WWII, in some ways, and AFAIK that worked great. Just unofficial, and with a profit margin. [EDIT] Well, and also it's not kept within the host country, but exports those ideas & methods globally.
- kennend3 4y agoAS someone who has both read the book and interacted with "big 4" names a few times this is going to be one of those "underrated" comments you sometimes see here. At my previous place of employ they made some really terrible decisions which ended up costing a LOT of money later. Their response was classic "the design was vetted by McKinsey".. No.. you sent them what you wanted to do, they told you what you wanted/needed to hear and now you are deflecting your decisions.
- azemetre 4y agoI worked for a health insurance provider that paid BCG $1mil to confirm that we should be using agile in our org. It took BCG a month to do their "study." We were already using agile in our org, but nice to know some incesteral relationship between directors/VPs were able to make a nice pay day.
- kennend3 4y ago> nice to know some incesteral relationship between directors/VPs were able to make a nice pay day. you should read the book.. The industry is rife with this type of behaviour. There are always stories about how "senior manager" X is basically a shadow employee. While they work for company "Y" their real job is to send business to the consulting mother ship.
- azemetre 4y agoI think I will now. I can't find the comment now, but there was a similar conspiracy about ex-Amazon Managers being paid to force their new employers to adopt AWS on one of the programming subreddits.
- toyg 4y agoThere is usually no forcing: they are typically hired because of their AWS knowledge - the business has already decided to go AWS, the new hire is doing what he's expected to do.
- 4y ago
- tequila_shot 4y agoThis. They are just a rubber stamp on some of the shitty decisions that management makes.
- kneebonian 4y agoThis was one of those big eye opening moments for me. Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling. You pay them a bunch of money to come run roughshod over your enemies by producing reams of analysis and Powerpoints, to fling the arrows of jargon, and lay siege to your enemies employees by endlessly trapping them in meetings and then they depart. Consultants are brought in to secure your flank, to provide air cover and to act as disposable pawns in interoffice combat. They are not brought in to solve problems, to find solutions, or because of their incredibly acumen. It's because they have no loyalty or love but money.
- moffkalast 4y agoAmazing, I'll have to save this quote.
- luckylion 4y agoSo everyone pays them and whoever pays them the least ends up with them wreaking havoc on their company by "helping" them to "improve" things?
- bps4484 4y ago"Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling." "They are not brought in to solve problems" I've known people that worked for consultancies and the biggest value add they think they have brought is when the problem is the rivalries, politics, and squabbaling has led to inaction and they've needed outside support to come in who don't care about these things. Perhaps we should hope for companies to have leadership teams where they are able to cut through this intransigence, but unfortunately all too often with old companies stuck in their ways this isn't the case.
- freetinker 4y agoThey might see their role as brilliant mediators facilitating action by settling feuds using 2x2 matrices, but I think that's naive at best, disingenuous at worst. They care about the agenda of the person they've been hired by. Usually a C-level agenda-setter or someone influential in the org, and often a McK "alum". And speaking of action, they have zero stake in the actual implementation of what they proselytize. All this isn't to say that they don't provide value. Exchange of money is usually is a reasonable signal of providing value, and these firms and its employees do reliably well in that area. However, the narratives around what value strategy consultants provide I find to be truthy, but not actually true.
- KineticLensman 4y agoI have worked as a consultant, but not for the one of the big 4. We understood that we were often being used to develop an 'independent' perspective that would support a decision that had essentially already been made or disprove a rival decision. We also were fully aware of the old joke that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch and then tells you the time. We sometimes deployed this ourselves with customers, and extended it to say that unlike our rivals, we would actually point out how late you were and how to get back on track. [Edit] We sometimes found ourselves supporting one of the big 4 companies (as domain experts). We were often amazed by the quality of the A team that they would deploy to win the work, compared with the B or C team that would then actually execute it (often bright but junior staff).
- xapata 4y agoI'd extend the joke with, "You're wearing it upside-down." It's never ceased to amaze me how incompetent large organizations can be.
- AlexandrB 4y agoI had an Econ prof who described his consulting business as: 1. Coming into the company and gathering information from the low-level staff. 2. Presenting the information to management. 3. Collecting $1000/hr or more for his trouble. Basically information washing to get execs to accept information that they would normally ignore. I wonder how much of this kind of thing goes on in industry.
- acdha 4y agoWhere I saw that work it was effectively routing around the middle layer: the guy bucking for a promotion based on some project isn’t going to let any report mention that the users hate it, but they’ll certainly tell the consultants that. It worked but was a very expensive way to about fixing social problems.
- Firmwarrior 4y agohaha, I definitely saw some of that at Amazon This highly-paid factory efficiency expert was enthusiastically explaining how he works. "You just listen to the workers. They know where the inefficiencies are"
- UK-Al05 4y agoThat's lean.
- globalise83 4y agoNot really, lean would be listening to the workers
- pempem 4y agoNo matter how many times you recommend managers do this very thing, they do not.
- wahnfrieden 4y agohttps://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullsh... Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs elaborates on this
- mbesto 4y agoFurthermore, they're trying to convince someone else (usually a boss) of a theory/idea/strategy that they might have but don't have the resources/rapport/etc. to demonstrate it's effectiveness.
- kriro 4y agoThat's exactly my experience in Europe. We want to fire 50 people/close a factory/whatever without blowback...let's hire McK to tell us to do exactly that. I've also had some experience working for a smallish company with very big clients and they sometimes insisted on having an IT-Consulting company like Capgemini as a middleman. That's the biggest nightmare because they were always a net-negative from my POV...integrating them was just extra work and they provided no value except for their brand name to make the client feel at ease.
- game_the0ry 4y agoThis has been my experience when the company I work for engages with an external consultant. Managers look for validation from an external source so that: - when things go well, they can take the credit, or - when things go bad, they can blame the consulting company. Grubby business if you ask me.
- 7thaccount 4y agoThis. They also sometimes just interview employees and write a report about what they heard. That should be easy for the company to do lol.
- bane 4y agoI'd say companies like this are a scam, but they're only half a scam -- half the customers know exactly what they're getting. The other half haven't figured it out and think they're getting top-tier stuff and end up with life destroying garbage like your employee performance system or a citywide trash crisis? [1] Do you need to spend millions to justify an inevitable decision but blame the hired guns for it? Hire McKinsey. Do you need to spend millions for severely overworked junior grade consultants and offshored "experts" to provide you with objectively terrible advice and create an opioid epidemic? Also hire McKinsey! [2] 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/new-york-city-trash-mckinsey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/new-york-city-tr... 2 - https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/opioidfacts https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/opioidfacts
- mayankkaizen 4y agoI have worked in a third-grade infrastructure company in India. Everyone in top management (including founder) was corrupt. Their business practices were always about bribing, siphoning off investors money, inflating assets, money laundering and so on. When it was trying to go public, it hired one of 'big 4' to do the auditing and other due diligence. Once it went public, that agency was fired (2 years after going public). With in 6 years, that company became bankrupt. Everyone knew that one of 'big 4' was hired to make the prospects of going public legit and credible. That consulting firm made things look right in exchange of big bucks.
- m463 4y agoI kind of wonder if that isn't how much of the business world works? What if you have a grocery store that makes $50,000 an hour? and you need to update the payroll software to deal with the latest tax law changes. in a situation like that, does $150/hr matter?
- raincom 4y agoBIG 4 = EY, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC? Top tier consulting firms are: McKinsey, BCG, Bain
- tequila_shot 4y agothe BIG 4 I'm referring to are Accenture, McKinsey, BCG and Bain.
- carabiner 4y agolol. McK isn't a body shop. McK = ivy league grads, olympic medalists, top PhD's from flagship state schools. I mean Chelsea Clinton worked at McKinsey. You think she's going to be managing some Indians on setting up SAP?
- SargeDebian 4y agoIf you redefine common terms as you go, you should at least give the reader a heads up. Nobody uses “big 4” for MBB and Accenture. Those are not the same type of companies.
- fphhotchips 4y agoThere's nothing quite so "tell me you worked for Accenture without telling me you worked for Accenture" as referring to MBB and Accenture as "Big 4". It's like Deloitte consultants referring to MBBD.
- operatingthetan 4y ago>It's like Deloitte consultants referring to MBBD. I'm pretty sure that's just a reddit meme, but I guess it's funny someone took it seriously?
- eastbound 4y agoThe whole thread is debating who’s sitting in the BIG4 and all I see is companies trying to belong on musical chairs. What’s strangest to me is we’re not in an early-Schumpeter cycle, seats should be well-established by now, it’s been half a century.
- runnerup 4y agoI've heard that curing internal myopia is a top priority for McKinsey this decade. Focus is on broadening gender/age/economic background and also broadening professional experience backgrounds. They're hiring and developing a lot of top talent in "hard skills" (e.g., not MBA's) across different industries. From what I've been able to tell, it's paying off a lot with strategies that are grounded in reality and catching things that non-technical people would miss. Really depends on the team you get assigned to your project though, as with any contracting/consultant situation.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoOh, glad McKinsey is going to ruin the psychology of a bunch of LGBTQ people with 80 hour work weeks while they union bust foreign nations. You aren't developing shit when every single person you hire leaves after 2 years, don't astroturf this garbage here. What kind of weak political literacy do we have in America where agencies who literally aligned themselves with tyrannical oppressive dictators who behead rivals and loot the wealth of their own population get an ounce of room to "change" and represent "more diverse opinions". (Spoiler warning, it's one where everyone in power secretly agrees that profit triumphs over any other possible motivation)
- factsarelolz 4y ago> McKinsey is going to ruin the psychology of a bunch of LGBTQ people with 80 hour work weeks while they union bust foreign nations. Do the 80 hour work weeks not ruin the psychology of non-LGBTQ folxs?
- TheNorthman 4y agoIt's a tongue-in-cheek comment, not a serious statement regarding psychological resilience.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoIt was sarcasm, and yes.
- 4y ago
- Foobar8568 4y agoOnly $150/hour as a Senior in a big4?
- makestuff 4y agoSince "senior" is in quotes, I am guessing you probably come out of undergrad with a senior title or get it after 1-2 years.
- tequila_shot 4y agoI'm talking about a fresh out of college grad/undergrad. Managers charge 400-600(mind you 25% on top of this is for travel).
- makestuff 4y agoHow much does each level take home? Like if I bill out at $500 an hour are they paying me around 250/hr ~500k/yr?
- ericmay 4y agoNot exactly. The thing to keep in mind here though is that billable rate isn't necessarily 40 hours/week and you likely have some sort of salary component that requires you to hit a base amount of billable hours. So something like (just making up numbers here) $120,000/year $170/hr for each billable hour over 20 hours/month Sales/delivery bonuses, etc.
- mgkimsal 4y agoThat still seems low for any big4. Those were numbers I remember seeing 25 years ago for large consultancies personnel.
- Foobar8568 4y agoBig4 I used to work are fairly clear about who they call senior (consultant / senior consultant / manager / senior manager/etc) and I can rarely fault them. Now for consultancies (Accenture and the like), the term is a bit more loose indeed.
- markhlady 4y agoBig 4 not really comparable to McKinsey. Completely different game and set of projects clients ask you to work on.
- hef19898 4y agoPlus, the Big 4 are, by law (SOX), forbidden from doing consulting work. Also, there are for, because public companies need someone to audit the books and someone to help them to prepare those books. Companies have to change auditors and the ones helping to prepare the books ever so often, and you cannot just stick with the same two simply switching chairs. All of that, of course, to avoid another Enron like disaster. Hence a pool of four big accounting firms most public companies, regardless if the fall under SOX or not, cycle through.
- kyawzazaw 4y agoJust saw a hrly rate in my country Myanmar where they are charging an Associate rate as USD180/hr in 2022.
- oneoff786 4y agoI’m mckinsey. All I’ll care to say here is that we don’t outsource any technical work
- indigodaddy 4y agoSame with Deloitte? Don’t they have a ton of directly employed engineers?
- blue039 4y agoI have worked with the big 4, and also been on the receiving end of their "work". I can vouch for this comment personally. I've never seen less effort put into something worth so much money. Reams and reams of documents, jargon, and other bullshit and some cheap, obviously outsourced, incredibly shitty, "wireframe" sold as an MVP of a product. I would be impressed by them if I wasn't so disgusted.
- exclusiv 4y agoI've also seen some of these expensive "strategic" documents. And they looked like they were written by a high schooler (not a top of the class student either).
- hef19898 4y agoJust how fast they can adopt their standardized, saying-nothing-of-value presentations to each client's internal jargon and "needs" is impressive so, I have to give them that.
- jasmer 4y agoSo that's actually not 'hoodwinked'. Paying $1B for a site that should cost $50M is 'hoodwinked'. $150/hr is really not that much money, depending on the importance of the project, and having devs from India is fine. Almost the entirety of the question in any given situation is 'Did it work out?' Because if it did, it was worth it. Companies are not interested in making 'great products' like a startup would, for some secondary thing. Mostly, it's like construction: they need something built. That works. Not some kind of innovative thing. They don't have a year to find 'top talent' and go through interesting architectures, or dynamic processes. They wouldn't even know how to do that. You might be very well downplaying your input: if you are competent, know what you are doing, show up, and can solve the problem, you're probably worth every penny and much more. Now maybe that is or is not the case! Or maybe 'it depends' or maybe, some projects kind of necessarily require 'proper engineering'. Now, all of what I just said would apply to normal circumstances. In Africa, it's so complicated. McKinsey is also very different office by office. Corruption is harder than we understand, because when it's a random event we can say 'oh, corrupt!' - but when it's normal trade practice aka 5% kickback for the buyer, well, it takes on a different characteristic.
- the_cat_kittles 4y agoyour comment just establishes a spectrum- on one extreme, you have what is essentially a helpful project manager, on the other extreme you have a worse than useless middle man. I think the point might be that Mckinsey is more towards the bad extreme than people think.
- jasmer 4y agoFor starters - 'McKinsey' actually doesn't do implementations. So you're not going to hire them to build something. Second, it's hard to fathom their value because it's very secretive. There's nary any real objective data.
- eastbayjake 4y agoMcKinsey does, in fact, build software with clients: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/how-we-help-clients/build-by-mckinsey/overview https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/how-w...
- fudged71 4y agoHow common is outsourcing tasks in the big 4? I thought it was just things like powerpoint slide layout
- wheelinsupial 4y agoIn my experience, Accenture is the big body shop. I've worked at companies that outsource tech strategy, new system requirements / scoping, delivery and development, and post deployment support and maintenance 100% to Accenture. There are regional hubs they have (I've worked with Philippines and India and heard of Eastern Europe) for the support and maintenance. There are some back office financial shared services (e.g., AP / AR / cutting POs) that they also support. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more. Accenture can give you everything from the PowerPoint slides up to the people that will be seconded or placed in your organization as contingent workers / contractors.
- yamtaddle 4y agoThat's Big 3 like McKinsey, and yes, notes sent to India, India turns them into powerpoints, team on the engagement has the powerpoints by the next morning (apparently execs don't even read something that's not in a powerpoint—they'll do this with stuff that's only ever going to be emailed, never presented)
- sharadov 4y agoUsed to work as a sub-contractor for Deloitte, all the work was done by us, the Deloitte folk would spend 12 hrs a day at work - looking super busy, attending meetings, schmoozing with the client, go for lunches and dinners and building reports and spreadsheets. They hired impressionable good looking young people who were good at selling, period.
- carabiner 4y agoYou were Accenture. Just say it.
- wolverine876 4y agoWhat year is that? $150-160/hr is the cost of a local small business IT consultant.