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167 points godelmachine | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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OptionOfT ◴[] 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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burnte ◴[] No.41889705[source]
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.
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1. weard_beard ◴[] No.41904011[source]
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.