Hey nitro, The amount the high level govt 'really' take home (off the books) is a lot more...corporations, special interest groups, lobbyists, etc. Govt's are corrupt at every corner of the earth and always on the take. To accept the fact that they only receive their salary is just a little to naive, IMHO.
Nah, they don't get paid much because its public service. You do it for your country not for the money. Didn't it used to be a part time job back in the day?
'McKinsey is good at what they do and to attract quality you have to pay up so that in fact your deliverables are quality and services recommended and used again...' Majority of consultants are hogwash........if Mckinsey and Bain were so good then industries like Airline would be pulled out of deep deep billion dollar losses. Just because they are Ivy leagues does not mean they think and speak from the 7th dimension when average humans do that at 3rd. If the group of Mckinsey's were to pick a basket of stocks, the results would be no different than average. Consulting is a polished way to snatch dough from companies.
The one who can spin the biggest BS yarn is on the highest pay. In the end it is like this: Customer ask consultant for the time. Consultant asks customer to hold customers Rolex. Consultant tells customer time and charges Rolex as fee and puts Rolex on his wrist. Dogbert had it right indeed. Remember the cartoon where he as a salesman tells customer: "We are partners. Now, let me hold on to our (your) money for us"
Hello: Just wanted to inject a little bit of reality into the discussion. Chelsea is a Stanford graduate (History degree) who went on to Oxford to get an advanced degree (foreign policy I think). I don't know her personally, but my dad work for hers (military) and I remember that he thought she was a sharp person. As regards consultants, I guess the comments that I read are no more or less ignorant than those you people post about trading. I worked as a consultant for a few years. In my experience, if you could produce results consistently, you could charge whatever you wished to. In general, the name firms do not carry deadwood. Regardless of parentage, a consultant at these firms has to produce or eventually they are out on the street. Please don't let me detour you from the entertainment part of the thread. Continue as you were. Thanks, Steve Edit: Since this site is mostly for entertainment, I will mention a story that I heard from my dad. I don't know if it is true. Sometime in 2000, President Clinton visited East Africa, with Chelsea coming along for the ride. During the trip, they visited a University where a student was smitten with Chelsea and he contacted the Clintons, offering to marry Chelsea and to "pay" 20 head of beef cattle and 40 goats for her. No word on how they reacted to the offer, or whether they responded in any way.
If I had an issue with company, I would be better off talking to a security analyst of a brokerage firm and I will be more abreast through him on trends, scopes and efficiencies. Regarding, internal matters like wastage and process inefficiencies, that is the matter of line managers sitting together and hammering it out. I worked in one company, the stupid team of consultants took 3 months to create an Access spreadsheet to interlink departments so others can see what other department was doing. They also created max and min time for certain jobs to be finished. All this was the work of the managers, toughening up and Directors pulling the whip on managers. $150/hour consultants were basically chased out by the employee with questions like "When are you guys leaving, Is today your last day?". 1 month after they left, the company went into Chapter 11 with eventual closure of the business. I have much more respect for securities analysts than consultants charging $300/hour to send e-mails to their home offices regarding the summary of 'work in progress'.
Chelsea Darling was hired to get more business from other firms because her Dad was the tenant of the white house for 8 years. As to she is sharp or curly, does not matter, Mckinsey needs more business and hiring Chelsea was a sharp move, this I would give them.
This was my experience too and is the experience that many of my college friends are having too. Trimming the fat came around semi-annually. There were seldom surprises on the fat trimming list...
...maybe it is because the majority of people I have worked with have been of an extremely high-calibre (expect most - though not all - in management), but most of the company employees ran circles around the consultants. Most consultants added virtually nothing (and we are talking big consulting houses here), and the permanent employees ended cleaning up after their mess. Why were they called in, in the first place? Good question. probably idiot managers - many of them with a consulting background. I'd rather hire, train and retain more good people, only hiring contractors/consultants when absolutely necessary and that would be to do monkey work, not critical tasks - but then again my ideas are a little radical Just my experience... of course, your mileage might vary