According to levels the pay band caps out around $250k and a principal title. It's good but probably not enough for most to put up with the culture long term.

Not really when you normalize by hours you are expected to work. You're also surrounded by spineless sycophantic keeners without an original thought in their heads who would throw you off the building for a good review.

It reminds me of Lewis' "National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments"

The health care is amazing, though. $30/mo for a family $900 deductible? Something like that. If you have a sick family member it's a no brainer.

Not really relative to broader options in tech. The big money goes to the consulting leaders, but most of these folks look like glorified grifters more and more as time goes on.

Ultimately AI may be a big threat to the sort of “advisory” work McKinsey historically focused on.

Well, fair point. It doesn't work for their clients.

As an ex-consultant: consulting at that level is kind of a grift. They over-promise and under-deliver as SOP. It's ripe for AI disruption, whatever that looks like.

This somehow implies that initiatives or strategies from consultants are somewhat successful. This is not the case in my experience.

Analysis:

1. How do I build a datacenter

2. How is the industrial ceramic market structured, how do they perform

3. How does a changing environment impact life insurance

Strategy:

1. Should I build a datacenter

2. Should I invest in an industrial ceramics company

3. Should I divest my life insurance subsidiary

Specifically in the software world this would be "automate some esoteric ERP migration" or "build this data pipeline" vs. "how can we be more digital native" or "how do we integrate more AI into our company"

For instance, what would we need to start offering siracha in our burger?

How can it be that what you just wrote is such a widely known fact? I've been reading this and hearing this from consultancy people as well for many years now. If the guy lacks the political power, why don't his internal political opponents say, "nice try hiring the consultants, but we know this trick very well, you still don't get it your way".

It has to be some kind of higher level protection racket or something. Like if you hire the consultants there is some kind of kickbacks to the higherups or something with more steps involved where those who previously opposed it will now accept it if it's rubberstamped by the consultants.

Or perhaps those other players who are politically opposing this person are just dummies and don't know about this trick and actually trust the consultants. Or maybe it's a bit of a check, that you can't get anything and everything rubberstamped by the consultants, so it is some kind of sanity filter that the guy isn't proposing something that only benefits himself and screws everyone else.

And if it's the latter, then it is genuine value, a somewhat impartial second opinion. Basically there is a fog-of-war for all the execs regarding all the internal politics going on, it's not like they see through everything all the time and simply refuse to take the obviously correct decision for no reason.

In my experience, McKinsey often gets brought in from the very top - who should be able to push through more or less what they want. They just want a scapegoat in case things go wrong.

The version I've heard is that you can pin the blame on the consultants if it goes wrong.

Yeah its more this, the companies who ask Mck's help in software tend to hire contractors or vend out software already.