The difference is that in most cases, the shady mechanic is not somebody you already know from college, or from golf or your national frat society.

McKinsey gets paid ungodly sums in part because they are the archetype of the old boy's club. Their new hires usually come only from top business schools, and likely already have several years under their belt at the types of companies McKinsey gets business from. In addition to that, most banks already have several ex-McKinsey people on staff anyway.

Boston Consulting Group are in the same tier. Back in college, BCG and McKinsey were the holy grail of employers for pretty much all Econ/Finance students who didn't want to go the IB route.

Here's the basic model:

- McKinsey hires a bunch of "top" school grads

- after a few years, some hires clearly have the potential to make partner, and most don't

- McKinsey encourages clients to hire the people who aren't partner material at an attractive wage

- feeling good about making a step up after capping out at McKinsey, most people gladly accept

- McKinsey now has an alumni network at client's which are a good source of future business

- repeat as desired to build up alumni network

Most people leave McKinsey willingly for greener pastures, not because they were not considered partner material and were forced out. People join consulting mostly for the exit opportunities, not because they strive to be lifers there

There's a lot of setup that goes into encouraging people to leave. Management works hard to make sure that people have greener pastures to go to. The people leaving don't see that side of it. If a partner encourages a client to hire Susie, and Susie leaves for the client, Susie might not ever know that a partner helped create that opportunity.

A friend of mine who used to work in management at Ernst & Young told me a bit about how this game is played. You need a strategy for getting people out that maintains the relationship, and offering backdoor bribes to lure people away is one way they do that.

I'm sure this happens, but the implied idea that McKinsey only keeps the best and only loses the people they intend to lose, is hilarious. Consulting sucks in many ways, even if you're consulting for McKinsey.

They don't have to be formally forced out, just realize that they're not likely to win the competition to be partner and move to other companies out of self-interest.

There isn't really any difference between what you said and what OP said, you don't have to be forced out to take the hint your job is a dead end.

Some people don't know this, but Sundar Pichai is ex-McKinsey. Could be one of those "not good enough to make partner".

Thankfully we don't have tattoos in our foreheads advertising what other people think of us :).

I'm sure some arrogant ass somewhere is telling themselves that the great ones become partners at McKinsey & the washouts become CEO of Google. Kind if like that quote "Anyone can aspire to be President of the United States, but few have any hope of becoming president of the Bohemian Club." [1]

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-05-26-mn-2818-s...

My experience has been that the vast majority of McKinsey and BCG consultants have absolutely no real world experience. My company has been hiring these people for internal roles in droves and it's hilarious (and depressing) to watch how useless they are when they can't just leave after dropping some nice sounding but useless solution on someones desk.

Yeah. But they speak a language that more people should be familiar with. I've been part of organizations where the consultants roll in and hand-wave together a plan of action with statistics and proof. It's almost impossible to up against that unless you're prepared. More people need to know how to deal with it.

>My experience has been that the vast majority of McKinsey and BCG consultants have absolutely no real world experience

And one of these drones currently runs Google :(

Pichai worked at Google for a decade before becoming CEO, he's hardly a consultant with "absolutely no real world experience".

It's still an old boys club, but it's more revolving door now. You flip between industry and consulting. Each move you bring a few with you who reward you later.

Yeah, and I was gonna say, "McKinsey's same study revealed that the other half of banks are all McKinsey clients in good standings..."

> $2000 an hour consultants

… who graduated college three years ago and get 50 of those dollars per hour themselves.

Just watch _House of Lies_. Marty Kaan and Associates will kick the ass of your McKinsey folks.

This fantastic show really gets at what consultants are doing. It was based on a book by a real management consultant. They all have their MBAs from the good schools. You go to a company, figure out what the ceo wants you to decide and is paying you to 'investigate', and then support them with a complicated opinion with numbers and accounting details (that a lot of people aren't going to investigate too carefully or refute). Offer 80% of what they need at that time, and a continuing contract to figure out the rest.

Exactly.

> All while building the talent and the advanced data-analytics infrastructure required to compete

Guess who, among the top consulting groups is currently investing a lot in data-analysis at the moment? Yes, McKinsey.

They are pretty late to the party, Gamma [0] is more mature and more experienced than their McKinsey counterpart.

[0] https://www.bcg.com/beyond-consulting/bcg-gamma/default.aspx

Not really. They're pretty much the same.

*current mckinsey data scientist who got an offer from both Gamma and McKinsey, and turned down Gamma despite being offered a higher salary.

I'm thinking of applying to McKinsey as a data scientist, could we have a chat sometime?

I would prefer to remain anonymous but I'm open to answering questions here

I think we all know by now that you are James Oscar McKinsey

2k/hr?????

It's basically therapy for corporate executives, delivered via powerpoint, with a healthy side of blame insurance. And yeah, it's expensive.

Dad worked at a bank (just below CEO). He once said that McKinsey was most useful when you wanted to kill a project diplomatically, and make sure it would stay put. Have McKinsey come in, make the recommendation that X project was no good, and kiss it goodbye with McKinsey absorbing the blame. Other way around was to give projects some extra push and credibility.

Or launch a thing, to be fair.

We came up with a product internally. So our CEO hired a top-tier consulting company to sell our own idea back to us. That process cost millions.

But they do make real slick presentations and they have higher status than internal staff, and the CEO can say that a top-tier consulting firm recommended we do x, y and z... Blame insurance is right.

Once you hit a certain scale, e.g. where CEO is so stratospherically above rank-and-file in social status that it's not appropriate to speak directly anymore, consultants can act as a social buffer. Among other things they can launder recommendations from regular staff to management and put that objective shine on them.

The downside is that we know for a fact (when they accidentally published an android app to the playstore, I reversed it and it was our code) that collateral, research and demos that we paid for got sold to others.

Everyone should watch the series House of Lies, that completely supports this description ;-) It's the most enjoyable and subversive show about the world of business ever.

This is so true, so much of management consulting is therapy with some generalist strategy and interesting analogies thrown in.

I guess the main thing I missed in my pithy assessment was the way they'll update you on "industry best practices" (=your competitor's processes that are working better than yours). So they're also a kind of mix of corporate spies and governance R&D mutual aid program.

This is poetry.

And all true.

actual mckinsey employee. no, other posters don't know what they're talking about. Fees will vary, but that's way, way too high except for perhaps the senior partners (who wouldn't be there most of the time anyway). ffs

Sounds high. Top partners at law firms will have rates lower than that.

It is extra reward for those who help leveraging the synergies while paradigms go shifting.

What a dynamic observation!

Let’s take this offline.

plus expenses!

Yeah