• Rentlar
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1839 days ago

    Well, consulting is often used because they need an answer to a question. That may be open-ended like:

    “What moves should we make to expand our business?”

    But other times they just want confirmation:

    “Should we merge with Discovery?” (Sure, I guess. Here are some reasons you could. cha-ching)

    “Should we split with Discovery?” (Sure, I guess. Here are some reasons you could. cha-ching)

    Other times they just need to pay people to give them excuses to lay off people. McKinsey’s always available for that.

    • @jballs@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      124
      edit-2
      9 days ago

      When Chipotle got a new CEO (Brian Niccol, who has since become the Starbucks CEO) a few years back, they were headquartered in Denver. But the CEO lived in Newport Beach. So they brought in a consulting management firm to examine where the best place in the country was for them to have their corporate headquarters.

      After weeks of analysis - surprise, surprise - they determined that the best place they could possibly have a corporate headquarters was in Newport Beach, where the CEO lived.

      So they fired most of their corporate workers and moved the office to be closer to the CEOs house.

      • @Soup@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        639 days ago

        “Sorry we don’t do remote work and you’ll have to come into the office.”

        “Counterpoint: …”

      • @BossDj@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        219 days ago

        I have experienced this where I work. There is a consulting company that gets rolled out to make packets full of “data”, graphs, summaries, and surveys that always manages to support the unpopular thing the boss wants.

    • @bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      589 days ago

      Other times they just need to pay people to give them excuses to lay off people. McKinsey’s always available for that.

      What would you say… you do here?

      • snooggums
        link
        fedilink
        English
        369 days ago

        Get paid to do the work of someone who could be employed for a reasonable salary, but the board or CEO wants the answer to come from someone outside the company to avoid taking any blame.

      • @kambusha@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        179 days ago

        Look, I already told you: I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don’t have to. I have people skills. I am good at dealing with people! Can’t you understand that!? What the hell is wrong with you people!!

    • @sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      49
      edit-2
      9 days ago

      McKinsey:

      For when you have no fucking clue how to do your job, and want authoritative, plausible deniability about that.

    • @jj4211@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      69 days ago

      How should we defend Athens?

      Consultancy says “A wooden wall will save Athens”

      We’ve been doing this forever…

  • Jack
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1529 days ago

    Consulting services are vital because they improving corporate synergy by utilizing market solutions and relocating potential where it is needed most.

  • @andros_rex@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    77
    edit-2
    9 days ago

    TLC used to be The Learning Channel. Before it was “here’s a bunch of children who are being sexually abused behind the camera,” it was educational outreach. Vocational training. Satellite college courses for people in Alaska and Appalachia.

    Then Discovery bought it. Fuck Discovery.

    • Captain Aggravated
      link
      fedilink
      English
      89 days ago

      Why do I associate TLC with, like, Trading Spaces and other domestic not-quite-a-game shows like that? Am I conflating it with something else? Also I haven’t had “television” in decades now.

      • @andros_rex@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        25
        edit-2
        9 days ago

        Because that’s the slop it turned into. It was a place for documentaries and educational content, just like MTV used to have music. But watching Kate torment her brood of children or Honey BooBoo eat sketti makes the kind of money airing a college lecture doesn’t.

        • @fishy@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          28 days ago

          This kind of content taking off and the popularity of the Kardashians were the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the intellectual apocalypse we’re dealing with now. We are what we eat, and what you watch absolutely influences how you think and act.

          • Captain Aggravated
            link
            fedilink
            English
            18 days ago

            I used to watch Trading Spaces back in the day, and I remember when they started off and they’d actually do a good job, then I think there was an episode where the couple didn’t like what they’d done, that got more engagement, then it became a show about neighbors ruining each other’s homes, and thus was born reality television.

      • @VetOfTheSeas@discuss.online
        link
        fedilink
        English
        78 days ago

        It used to be PBS for adults. I remember turning it on and there would be a documentary about like piano players and the connection to the brain.

        Went down hill thanks to reality TV.

    • @mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      69 days ago

      Yep. I thought for ages that it was a spinoff of discovery but no, it was a whole thing that went back to the 80s. After Discovery acquired it blam.

    • @MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      229 days ago

      “Certainly Sir! Money well spent!”

      You have to understand why they are employed though - somebody stands to gain from doing some thing, so the way they get to justify doing that thing is to hire these people, so they come in, deliver a report that says the thing is the best thing to do with graphs that go up, and it happens, McKinsey gets paid, the beneficiary gets what they want and life goes on.

      • Brave Little Hitachi Wand
        link
        fedilink
        English
        119 days ago

        That plus there’s a massive incentive for overpaid executives to farm out any actual decision-making to consultants. They could lose their cushy jobs if they did something unpopular that made the news and hurt stock prices. But if the decision was promoted by an expensive consulting firm, that launders the blame. It hurts the business in a fundamental way, obviously, but publicly traded companies have not been very focused on fundamentals up until lately. Tighter monetary policy should have changed this, but the paradigm has been slow to shift for many.

    • @Coyote_sly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      38 days ago

      More like "tell me what you already decided to do, and pay me out the ass to create a justification for it so you can pin it on us if it’s a giant fuckup after the fact’.

  • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    569 days ago

    In, fire 30 percent of the workforce, new logo, boom, out.

    You are now a fully trained management consultant.

    • @nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      3
      edit-2
      8 days ago

      I had a friend who did consulting right out of college. Half the time he said it was his job to suggest layoffs so the people in charge could pretend it wasn’t their idea.

  • @webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    36
    edit-2
    9 days ago

    I don’t know who this person is but something tells me he is the son of a wealthy family who has connections to all of those brands.

    How far off am i?

    That job does not sound like a real job, it sounds like a job title that is a thinly veiled excuse to arrange perpetual exclusive socialism for the rich.

    Thank you for reading my analysis, the bill, regardless wether i am correct is about 69.420mil

    • sunzu2
      link
      fedilink
      329 days ago

      You aint wrong, McKinsey is the ultimate job farm for mid grade nepo babies and/or elite school graduates.

      For example, Ursula von der Leyen hired McKinsey for German Army re-org…

      then both of her children got plush jobs at the firm, her daughters 3 years there then leveraged into elite degree a Stanford

      https://fsi.stanford.edu/people/johanna-von-der-leyen

      Johanna joins the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy from McKinsey’s Sustainability Practice. During her 3.5 years at the management consultancy, she advised private sector clients from various industries on sustainability strategies and developed reports on climate risk with the McKinsey Global Institute. During her parental leave from McKinsey, she received a Master of Philosophy in Environmental Policy from the University of Cambridge (UK). She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Politics and Economics from the University of Münster. At Stanford, Johanna hopes to deepen her knowledge in integrating environmental policies into the dynamics of international policymaking. Her academic interests also include nature- and climate-related risk assessment and adaptation, and particularly the role of nature-based solutions. Johanna is an outdoor enthusiast, a passionate dressage rider who participated in competitions on the highest national level in Germany, and she enjoys running and gardening in her spare time.

      There is a club, and most people see it before their eyes and still somehow manage to not see it for it is.

      Just work harder!

      • @jqubed@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        89 days ago

        Wait, she went on parental leave from her job, as in having a newborn baby, and used that time to get a master’s degree? Either the baby didn’t spend much time with mom or the degree is a joke, because I have a really hard time imagining having the energy to work on a serious master’s degree in a year or less while taking care of an infant!

      • Lemminary
        link
        fedilink
        English
        5
        edit-2
        9 days ago

        Ackshually, they’re considered moral persons. ☝️🤓

        I know, it takes a second for the vomit to slide back down one’s throat.

  • @merdaverse@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    319 days ago

    From my (fortunately) brief experience in software consulting, I can confirm that is an important unwritten rule of the job. It doesn’t matter what exactly you sell to customers, as long as they are willing to buy it and come back. It explains why a lot of software is dogshit.

    • @stinky@redlemmy.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      78 days ago

      “I can’t produce anything, so I’ll take money away from other people doing business” ~consultants

  • sepi
    link
    fedilink
    English
    309 days ago

    Isn’t the google ceo a McKinsey stooge?

      • @MimicJar@lemmy.world
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        English
        219 days ago

        I mean no need to spread misinformation. This information in easily verifiable.

        Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, worked at McKinsey for ~2 years and then joined Google in 2004, eventually working his way into the position of CEO.

        Pichai’s fuck ups are unlikely a result of McKinsey, at least not directly. That isn’t to say that McKinsey is completely off the hook. They work with plenty of “top” companies and I’m certain Google is one of them.

          • @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            28 days ago

            McKinsey likes to hire recent graduates who they suspect will wind up in high places. It builds them strong connections and lets them brag to potential customers as well as customers’ stakeholders that they have cutting edge talent and that they hire the best and to tell potential employees that a few years with them is part of how you move from an elite educational institution into high levels of business or politics.

            The worst thing this says about Pichai is that he was the sort of person who seeks to be on the ladder to elite careers.

        • sepi
          link
          fedilink
          English
          49 days ago

          They certainly hire some “talent”

  • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    22
    edit-2
    9 days ago

    C’mon now…

    If they can’t charge all that money to be wrong. How can they pay the US government the $722,000,000.00 they owe?

    The Justice Department said McKinsey Africa had received credit for cooperating with its investigation and conducting anti-corruption training for employees. The $122,850,000 McKinsey has agreed to fork up includes a penalty it will pay in South Africa.

    McKinsey is also in talks with the Justice Department to pay more than $600 million to resolve a separate investigation into the consulting firm’s work helping opioid manufacturers boost sales that allegedly contributed to a deadly addiction epidemic, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/mckinsey-africa-pay-122-million-south-africa-bribery-scheme-us-justice-dept-says-2024-12-05/

    You think Purdue Pharma could have made all those drug addicts customers without McKinsey pushing pills for them?

    Won’t some think of the Billionaires stock portfolios!

    • @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      18 days ago

      Fair, but like, nothing sells itself like opiates. [I’m actually aware they’re the ones who encouraged the massive ad campaign focused on claiming oxycontin isn’t addictive, though given Sackler previous behavior I believe in their ability to figure that strategy out on their own]

  • @SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    218 days ago

    And if you are wondering why the German military is being made fun of so much: it’s McKinsey again. But no worries, we took care if it. The minister of defense in charge back then is long gone. Cause she is the president of the European Commission now. Multiple of her children have worked for McKinsey in the past. What a coincidence!