Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?

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.

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.

Which kinda makes sense. The work of an SWE at big tech can bring in a ton of cash due to (almost) infinite scaling of software and (almost) zero marginal cost.

But as an SWE at a manufacturing company, how much can your work increase their revenue/profit? The bulk of their income is still coming from the widget/commodity they are producing.

I mostly agree, but for sake of honest discussion... Why are the mechanical/electrical engineers also not paid well at these companies? Even at these companies capable of achieving massive scale with new products they design. Think something like 3M, making billions of units of widgets and commodities.