Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

(www.economist.com)

167 points godelmachine | 1 comments | 19 Oct 24 14:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.38s | source

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whatever1 ◴[19 Oct 24 16:29 UTC] No.41888778[source]▶

With labor becoming fungible in the eyes of c-suites, the holders of institutional knowledge are the libraries of the consulting firms. Consulting firms also have tech talent that traditional businesses had no access to in the past, so any large scale data driven related project is done with consultants.

However: 1. The costs are insane and probably we reached the point where the benefits do not justify the prices they are charging. 2. Wfh is a cheat code to get access to cheap tech personnel that is pissed with the RTO of big tech. I keep hearing tech folks working at traditional manufacturing shops remotely these days.

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nothercastle ◴[19 Oct 24 17:59 UTC] No.41889391[source]▶

>>41888778 #

Traditional mfg companies don’t understand tech. They don’t like that tech employees demand higher wages and benefits and hire bottom tier talent or try to convert existing non tech employees into programmers.

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1. apwheele ◴[19 Oct 24 20:34 UTC] No.41890582[source]▶

>>41889391 #

So have not dealt with McKinsey specifically, but other MBA/Consultant types I feel like they treat software engineering like we are ditch diggers -- they just request things and expect it to magically happen.

So most of the requests are insipid, some are impossible, and they have no desire to spend effort to understand either.

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