Actually, there are some jobs that have some salaries you wouldn't believe. I know a welder who makes $95K and he works like 45 hours a week. He never went to college. What for?
I don't know why I'm going to stick my finger in the dike but here goes. It's fashionable to gloat over the fallen mighty and its comforting to convince yourself that highly regarded groups of people are just shams and more incompetent that yourself. Are people from McKinsey the cream of the crop? Or are they just complete dolts as many posters suggest, lucky to get into the good schools? The truth as always lies somewhere in between. Not everyone there is impressive, but I can tell you that there are a heck of a lot more quality people in a random sample of McKinsey consultants than in a random sample of ET posters. Never been a consultant, but I have dealt with many companies and there is a lot of regard for McKinsey within those ranks. It's okay with me if no-one believe what I say - the world is what you make of it. Like I said, the consulting business is simple - quality people for time sharing by corporations.
Why am I replying I have no idea. I have spent 6 years in management consulting in a top firm (BCG). While the average quality of people I worked with in consulting tend to be higher than almost all the other place I have been (wall street, trading, hedge funds, etc). The problem isn't that they are not smart, the consultants are very smart, and very articulate as well. Problem is that most top management have no idea how to use consultants. Consultants are notorious for putting a smart kid ("smarties") into the fire very quickly, I was just 3 months out of grad school and I was sitting in front of CIO for a wall street firm, advising him on e-commerce strategy (this is circa '96-97). Yes, I graduated top of my class, and I published a lot, but really I have no idea what I am doing, I was literally gleaming the information as I go along (it is easy when there are all the information available to me). And from my career path in consulting (fast promotions), I did extremely well. Consultants are very good in bring in a good process and objectives, good background study and a well articulated situation analysis. But the actual implementation of the problem resolution still rests with the client, that's the inherent weakness with consultants. Did I take advantage of the consulting situation? Of course! I learned to talk my way into practically anything, but I don't have the 5-10 years of industry experience or depth to back it up. Yes I can walk into a situation (engagement), analyze the problem and the players quickly, and come up with some intelligent to say. But am I really contributing to solving the problem? I am not so sure, since I won't be the person (nor the firm) to implement the solution anyways, that's not my problem. Rufus
Tis true that not everyone who is a consultant is a moron bullshit-artist, especially McK who have a GS type reputation. However, lets not assume that every other consulting firm attracts people of the - supposed - McK calibre. The Morons in my previous examples where from Accenture, PWC and EY. The only consultants I was ever happy with where from BCG. Period. Lets not talk about measuring "Quality" (objectively and quantitatively I would presume) from "Random Samples", as that might be inviting Dr Taleb (read - ex derivs trader and author of Fooled-By-Randomness) to smack us over the noggin with a Gray-Nicholls (read - Cricket Bat) Don't know about McK, as they apparently weren't suitable for our roles. Although I had a... ahem... "brief liason" with a woman who used to work for them in London. She was bright - as bright as anyone working for any other consulting firm or top-tier IB in the city, but nothing extraordinary.
Exactly..., the first goal of these companies is to build lobbies. Relationship is the first seeked value because business is made in the board rooms and private clubs, not through Mr. X exceptionally smart guy. Granted, nobody wants to hire idiots and McKinsey probably does a good job in checking SAT scores, but imagine the added value in hiring somebody like Chelsea Clinton...
Let's be fair, while McK and Bains folks are no morons and are top of the Ivy leagues, but putting a 3 month graduate to solve the problems of CIO is plain simple BS. The company would have learned more by investing $1000 i.e. mere 1K into newest books and newsletters in the industry and would have gained tons of information including deep studies on competition. The problem is once you are in the billion dollar firm's executive level then to even solve a coffee room spill, a food industry consultant from Mck/Bains is sent the company limo.
No first year college kid is sent. Usually a team handles the problem. These consulting firms are actually very important to industries. Not everyone is born as Jack Welch so you hire a management consulting firm. If they were so useless then they wouldnt exist. I bet that most of the folks here would take those jobs in a heartbeat if they could get em.