Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

It was a really interesting place to work at a Software Engineer. It made me understand the business. It made me understand that doing the right thing isn't valued. You do the thing that has the shortest ROI.

It also made me realize that it is horrible to build software with people who expect short term deliveries like the usual McKinsey engagement. People who expect that the automation of an Excel file takes the same time as getting a BA to do it.

I am now in a full time engineering position. I don't talk to clients anymore.

What I miss the most is coming into contact with people with a huge variety of backgrounds.

Which surprisingly were the people with who I had to spent the most amount of time explaining how software works.

Maybe I'm bad at it? Who knows. But I learned a lot, and I'm happy where I'm at now, so any bitterness would be misplaced.

Not to mention they paid for my GC.

>Not to mention they paid for my GC.

What does GC mean in this context?

Green card

> What I miss the most is coming into contact with people with a huge variety of backgrounds. > Which surprisingly were the people with who I had to spent the most amount of time explaining how software works.

How is this surprising? I read this as "huge variety of backgrounds", meaning, all kinds of backgrounds which are NOT software. It would make sense to me they don't understand how software works.

I took it to mean that you’d think it would have been annoying to have to repeatedly explain things, but he misses them.

I had a hard time working for an ex-McKinsey/Deloitte/MBA type a while ago for similar reasons: it was always favourable to push a quick hack to resolve an immediate issue, and literally nothing else mattered.

If you had to fight fires all hours day, night and weekend to keep on top of it, then so what? That’s the job. Getting heart palpitations because the red circle came up on the Slack icon on your screen? That’s the job.

Even with a clear path to a mid-term or even sustainable solution, it was like you weren’t building software but in a constant race to keep ARR ahead of churn, like in Wallace and Gromit where Gromit is frantically laying down track to keep his train going. Does the software even work? Who cares… it’s the $$$ that count.

I wasn’t really built for that, I felt like I was at odds with my own passion and I didn’t really want to put my name to the work I was doing.

Other than code related data annotation for LLMs, this is the only kind of work I've ever been able to find in software development, all the consulting shops big or small work like that here. When I read about people having proper testing, code review, product managers setting actual expectations of what the software should do... It sounds like a wonderland to me.

Yeah, unfortunately you need a proper startup culture at your location to have access to companies small and big like that. I don't think there is a single place like that in Europe. Fortunately, it's quite easy to find work for American companies. And well paid.

I work with a guy who used to be at McKinsey. He's literally the worst coworker I've ever had. Everything needs to be done yesterday, except he takes weeks between responses. He delegates nothing to his people, and constantly tries to take over things from other departments, making himself an INCREDIBLE constraint and burden. They have an insanely toxic culture there.

>You do the thing that has the shortest ROI.

This is a tombstone for humanity and lots of companies if we all do this.

That cant be good for his health.

>If you had to fight fires all hours day, night and weekend to keep on top of it, then so what?

Same type of person who is completely incapable of understanding that doing more methodical, higher quality work now saves you the time wasted putting out fires later

Thank you I was literally wondering what garbage collection needs to be paid for.

Garbage collection always needs to be paid for -- in working set size and CPU time. That's why you never see production kernels, databases, video codecs, or high performance games written in GC languages.

Yes but it would still feel weird for me to thank my employer for that.

It's funny I worked with someone for a few months who was ex McKinsey. You could be describing him.

I haven't found it easy but my credentials... Could be better. I guess I'll have to pick s niche and really get to contributing to GitHub issues for it.

How is the work culture overall? I am of the opinion they are ruthless and will cull you if they think you are underperforming.

I heard the same about McKinsey

There’s plenty like it, but you won’t find it if you’re looking only for body shops. Of course, startups have similar problems of their own and you have to put some work into finding the right team and right product niche for you (e.g for me, sales and ad tech aren’t my thing).

I’d call it product engineering over agency work. Keep an eye out for positions in your typical SaaS setup, as well as financial institutions - not glamorous but better than being an arse on a seat.

Can’t speak for outside of Europe and UK though.

General contractor. GP made some changes to his house using the money his employer paid him.

Not at McKinsey, but one of their competitors. I have to say there is a lot of unhealthy behavior being rewarded in lots of ways across the spectrum of consulting.

There is real work to be done in the consulting world. Its just that there are perverse incentives to not be the one doing it.

Whether an engagement is successful or goes down in flames isn't obviously apparent until it is nearly completed. Everything feels like a high school class project where the goal is to DO as little as possible and if its successful to grab as much credit as you can, and if it fails, to distance yourself from it.

I had to develop an entirely new way of dealing with him in order for it not to affect _my_ health. I literally went to a therapist for a bit to create a plan for working with him.