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Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

(www.economist.com)
167 points godelmachine | 6 comments | 19 Oct 24 14:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.847s | source | bottom
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OptionOfT ◴[19 Oct 24 17:01 UTC] No.41888967[source]▶
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.

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1. ljm ◴[19 Oct 24 18:12 UTC] No.41889488[source]▶
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.

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2. Discordian93 ◴[19 Oct 24 18:39 UTC] No.41889682[source]▶
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.
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3. throw4950sh06 ◴[19 Oct 24 18:42 UTC] No.41889701[source]▶
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.
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4. FactKnower69 ◴[19 Oct 24 19:53 UTC] No.41890268[source]▶
>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

5. Discordian93 ◴[20 Oct 24 01:04 UTC] No.41892079{3}[source]▶
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.
6. ljm ◴[20 Oct 24 10:10 UTC] No.41894332{3}[source]▶
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.