> What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work.
That's pretty profound, and indeed I think it's not uncommon for people to get very burned out on very light workloads, as in OP, which OP has explained neatly.
I think this mis-characterises where the burn-out often comes from.
If you have an outwardly light task with onerous implications (just feeling you are being dishonest, as in these examples, can easily be enough) or very stressful segments, you aren't just dealing with the stress during the hours you are officially clocked-on, you will be thinking about it throughout chunks of the rest of your day. It may even inhibit sleep to an extent. Time away from a stressful situation is often not stress free time.
Unless of course you are one of those lucky people who can reliably switch these thoughts on and off at appropriate times, mentally shift responsibility ("not my job to keep that correct, guv'ner") without guilt, or lack the awareness for these issues to even present themselves at all. See "how do politicians and lobbyists sleep at night"!
In my experience this is a highly underrated statement.
In my day job, I work with Roblox developers, all whom either dropped out or never went to college to be full-time Roblox devs. They are so motivated by being on the platform that they will happily spend 8+ hours a day re-creating MS Office products on Roblox for our clients.
I was a manager, for a long time. Before that (and after), an engineer.
In the early days of being a manager, I was able to also be an IC on most projects, and my work counted for a lot.
However, my handlers did not approve of me "getting my hands dirty," and, quite often, explicitly interfered with efforts on my part, to be a technical contributor.
The last couple of years absolutely sucked. My team was burning out, and I wanted to pitch in and help, but I wasn't allowed to. The startup we worked with, wanted me to. The work was interesting as hell (however, in the long run, it never worked out). It was pretty much exactly in my wheelhouse.
Instead, I ended up sitting on my butt, trying to keep track of a chaotic situation, without imposing on my engineers, and waiting for stuff to happen.
That was real burnout. I didn't want to go into the office, anymore.
Eventually, my wish came true, and they disbanded my team, after that project went pear-shaped. Could I have made the difference? Almost certainly not, but I probably could have made a difference.
Since leaving that company, I have been working pretty much seven days a week, often, from early morning, until hitting the sack.
"I believed I was invincible. If MIT couldn’t burn me out, nothing else ever could. It took roughly three months before BCG disproved my “burn-out proof” theory"
I also wonder if this is a 'getting older' thing. When I was young, I had all the time to do anything. I had no money or opportunity, so when an opportunity came along I would go 100% into it.
Now that I have money, education, and experience, I have nearly endless options. I try to do the ones that suck least and have good ROI.
I think it mischaracterizes burnout entirely. Burnout is an internal process, and not one that can be defined in terms of external causes - you burn out when you are persisting against stress for long periods. There are certainly many standard recurring situations that can reliably cause such stress, but none of them are universal. In OP's case, it sounds like he's fairly motivated by his value-add, and found the prospect of functional dishonesty a major stressor (I'd have the same reaction).
I agree it is profound. I think the key is whether the workload is meaningful or purposeful; motivation being a proxy for how meaningful the work is. That meaning is both intrinsic (something someone finds personally meaningful) and extrinsic (something that contributes meaningfully to a greater whole).
You can still kill yourself on onerous yet meaningful work, but you'll also die fufilled and self-actualized.
You are partially mixing cause and symptoms. My burn out was totally erasing my motivation until I did not want to get up anymore. The cause was IMHO too much subconscious stress on multiple levels that kept my anxiety too high. But it is true that what follows is a downward spiral (which makes the statement true again: you however are unlikely to fix it by adding motivation)
This relates with me deeply. I once was almost literally told to "work harder, not smarter." Fortunately for my sanity, I was able to leave that place soon thereafter.
It's not that the work was hard, it was just kinda stupid.
I appreciate the brutal truth here about consulting. It took me a long time to realize that the goal wasn't to make something better or solve problems real. It was mostly about executive feelings, flattering people with money, and competition in dominance hierarchies. I don't do much consulting anymore.
And I salute anybody who turns down hush money. When I was laid off from Twitter they offered me something like $40k to sign a non-disparagement clause. It's been years, but I still owe them at least $30k of disparagement. This guy really got his money's worth.
> When I was laid off from Twitter they offered me something like $40k to sign a non-disparagement clause. It's been years, but I still owe them at least $30k of disparagement.
I spent a long time working in what you might call mid-tier consulting. We did a lot 6-8 figure consulting gigs at large corps mostly for digital and marketing projects, but also did some business strategy and product development. Sometimes we cross paths with Big 4 consultants who were embedded with the same client. We absolutely lived and died on our reputation and word of mouth for successful projects. The best engagements were the ones where we told clients they were asking for the wrong thing and needed to rethink their strategy. These were probably lower-level decisions than what Big 4 were doing, but still expensive things to get wrong. I've never seen or heard of anyone who has a positive opinion from the inside or out of the Big 4. It's like they are hired explicitly to draw up presentations to provide cover for knowingly wrong decisions that are already made.
16K for mutual non-disparagement isn't a serious offer. That's likely less than a month's salary for this guy. The message is they don't really care what he blabs about.
This is pretty much what every consultant I've met in a personal setting has ever said to me. MBB, Big 4, boutique, all of them.
The work isn't what it says on the tin. You may learn something about some area of business, that much is true, but you're not really advising people, you're producing slides that give your firm's rubber stamp on whatever has already been decided.
You get put into awkward positions. Someone close to me ended up doing a presentation to the governor of the Bank of England, at age 23. Clearly this person did not know much that the boss didn't already know, but the consultancy charged the Bank nonetheless.
Perhaps just one of dozens of people I've spoken to about this career thinks it was a good choice.
It’s not that bad. Plenty of boutique do genuine very specialised work and both MBB and Big 4 have both interesting missions and rubber stamping ones.
Consulting is very uneven and as a new hire, being assigned to one or the other is mostly down to luck. That’s fine because at its heart consulting is mainly about managing your clients and their expectations and that’s something you can learn in both kind of jobs.
A big difference between small and prestigious consulting firms will be how insufferably full of themselves your colleagues are however. It has a significant impact on how the job feels on a daily basis.
Ex-consultant here. It's an amazing choice to get into business...then gtfo.
There's a certain kind of person who thrives in consulting and good for them - it pays really well, you're seen as an expert, and for partners it's pretty 9-5.
But it requires a very clear line of ownership - like this article alluded to, if a client wants to piss away $1 billion, that's their choice. I'm here to support you however. I'll disagree, but not too hard.
If you can walk that line, and sprint for the ~10 years to get there, it can be a very good life.
Part of the issue is that the entire game is individuals in companies saying "We have free money!" and consultancies responding "We'll take that money!"
Who's to blame?
Well, I'm inclined to trace the temporal chain and say it starts with the client.
If you hire a consultancy and say "I want to figure out X, Y, and Z by doing A, B, and C, and show me your work" then that's a very different engagement.
But it requires you to know your business, and a surprising number of clients don't.
> but you're not really advising people, you're producing slides that give your firm's rubber stamp on whatever has already been decided.
Here's the truth that no one wants to admit to: People aren't looking for advice. Ever. They're looking for affirmation on the choice to which they've already made and are going to commit.
That's what they want. That's what "consulting" is. That's what "advice" is.
And it's all useless bullshit anyway. The reason it's all useless bullshit is because situations and circumstances are never the same across time and location. You could do exactly what Larry Ellison or Bill Gates or Elon Musk did in their lives, and you'll have a vastly different outcome, because the world isn't static - it's an endlessly dynamic system.
"Management consultant" isn't about consulting, and it sure as shit isn't about "management", other than "managing" the feelings of the people with whom you're dealing and making them feel like they're making a good choice.
The reason being, if that was an honest job, and you really were a recognized subject matter expert with decades of experience and knowledge in regards to whatever field you're hired to consult in, when you tell the client to do X and Y, they'd do X and Y. Well, if that's the fuckin' case, why do the clients so often do W and Z instead??
They're looking for validation of their idiotic, hare-brained idea... that's why. They're paying you to reassure them they're not as stupid as you know they are, and as dumb as they actually feel.
> The work isn't what it says on the tin. You may learn something about some area of business, that much is true, but you're not really advising people, you're producing slides that give your firm's rubber stamp on whatever has already been decided.
... which is all you need to realise to see how conspiracies occur, how politics is a dog and pony show, how finance is just the execution of pre-determined strategies. Reality is not unfolding naturally - there is a clear plan, to which a veneer of 'natural unfolding' is applied to carry most people along.
"I’m a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system — goods and services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent the value that a worker provides to others."
I still can't believe there are people this naive. Just reading a newspaper for a year should dispel these myths. A glance through history shows the aftermath of countless free-market train crashes. It's like those economists who thought most people were rational. Crazy stuff.
There are indeed those that are shockingly naive, and they are likely the majority. To give the benefit of the doubt though, it is widely accepted, even within say the Austrian school, that free markets need guardrails, and those guardrails are kinda like Fermat's famous "I'd write out the proof but there's no space in the margin". People underestimate what is necessary to provide reasonable levels of information symmetry, a just legal system, what constitutes fraud and false advertising, and so on. In the real world, you have mega corps in one corner and individuals in another, so the game is never as fair as "I trade you my tomatoes for your oranges" leads you to believe. As a result, there's a wide range of opinions amongst free marketers. The loudest tend to be accepting of things like insider trading, sex work and even organ selling, although that's likely not representative of people who self-identify with free market ideology.
It's also seems self-contradictory. Another bit of free-market dogma is the economy is so complicated no one can understand it, but if that's the case how can anyone tell that "goods and services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent the value that a worker provides to others" and not bullshit games, like the consulting described in the OP. I feel it just collapses into circular reasoning: "define what the market does as good and true, therefore what the market does is good and true."
I mean they're basically a college student given the YOE and where this was published, sounds like the kid got mugged by reality. But yea, definitely jaw-droppingly naive.
Well, he did mention monopoly effects and negative externalities, but only as if they are minor "extra terms" rather than completely disproving his starting point.
? I can't believe there are still people who don't grasp that he's right.
The free market has 'train crashes' just like the highway has 'car crashes'.
Most things of value are created by regulated markets.
We tend to only intervene when there are ugly monopoly areas (single access rights), and where pricing/elasticity cause problems (healthcare).
I mean you're literally on a site create but ultra captilists.
That said, there's no substitute for 'regular morality' I mean, beyond legalities etc.. I think it's assumptive in a lot of our systems, we just don't talk about it enough.
Honestly not a very surprising story. Maybe it wasn't even worth skipping the $16k. Looking at the endless list of boondoggles undertaken by some of the middle eastern countries awash with oil, one can only surmise that there is a well staffed consultant class there who are very talented at never saying no, I can say I'm completely unsurprised about that.
If you believe that as an employee of BCG, you're offering next to no value (as a yes man who makes snappy powerpoints to help squash the fleeting doubts of some architecturally aspirational minor royal), and that the actions of your clients are broadly unethical (destroying the planet, facilitating other people destroying the planet, cutting up diplomats, etc.), arguably, is it not ethically appropriate to act as a parasite for such clients to increase inertia in their operations and drain their ill-gotten gains?
A consultant is someone who borrows the client's watch, tells them the time, and keeps the watch.
In doing consulting, my biggest failure was turning down a class A network for the client (the client ended up with 6 /16s equivalents -- worth far more than what they paid me). I turned down $600M worth of IPv4 space at today's prices.
I'm currently suing my previous employers for unfair dismissal in what is honestly a compliation of some of the most craziest work stories people I tell them to have heard. At the first settlement offer had a boilerplate clause that I could saying bad things about the employer and considering the nature of all the stories it would be a non-disclosure covering some epic stories. Reality is, I would rather be able to tell those stories than take any settlement. The stories while super stressful to go through are super fun to tell to people, they're just that crazy.
Based on my own experience at McKinsey and what I heard from coworkers, I think the author’s experience comes from a mixture of the realities of management consulting and the realities of working in the Dubai office. For whatever reason, my colleagues who spent time in that office described poorly-defined projects, unmotivated clients, and rubber-stamping that went well beyond anything I experienced in the US.
I work at one of the well-known tech companies. We have recently gone on a consultant hiring spree after previously having avoided external contractors for years.
With a team of five consultants and their manager, months of useless hour long meetings to answer simple questions that can be looked up in the documentation, and plenty of slideshows and design docs that are mostly filled with fluff, they’ve produced... a dashboard that I could have put together in about 30 minutes.
Whatever social purpose this contract fulfills is a total mystery to me, but all I can think of is what a waste of human time this is.
>I wasn’t sure at the time, but having had enough free time of late to ponder such questions, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that having a father who can pay for a top-notch education outweighs the disadvantage of being raised by a hypocrite. Sticking with the job for the sake of a paycheck passes the children test.
This particular sentence struck a nerve. You can justify literally anything self-serving in this way; I had to beat that old man up and take his wallet, it was to pay for my hypothetical kids' college!
> Analytical skills were overrated, for the simple reason that clients usually didn’t know why they had hired us. They sent us vague requests for proposal, we returned vague case proposals, and by the time we were hired, no one was the wiser as to why exactly we were there.
Achieving this zen state is a primary goal of consulting firms working with public sector. After winning an initial brutal low balling battle with competitors, the goal is to transition to a model of a steady conveyor belt of non-competitive fluffy proposals for changes going one way to the client, and money flowing back the other way back to the firm.
> It was clear that the client was going to go forward with their decision regardless of how I acted. How could I be responsible for a foregone conclusion?
I wonder if it was NEOM. But that's going to destroy a lot more than only $1 billion when all is said and done.
> My moral system is organized around a utilitarian principle of greatest good for the greatest number — that which adds value cannot be wrong. It did not bother me therefore when I was handed consulting reports that had been stolen from our competitors. If the information in those reports would help us improve our client, then who could say we were doing wrong? Like downloading MP3s, it was a victimless crime.
My reply is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson [1]:
> A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
>The first clue that my mental picture of consulting was off came with “training” >in Munich. I expected instruction in Excel programming, data analysis, and >business theory.
Imagine signing up for MBB and thinking it was this. Completely misguided.
This post is ridiculous, the writer thought the business world was an academic meritocracy like (MIT). Also a silly notion.
Happy to talk about my experiences at Bain & Co (very similar to this). After four years of undergrad in Math & CS, and four summers of internships, I decided I no longer wanted to do software engineering. Thus, I applied and was accepted to strategy consulting.
I lasted six months, and am now happily employed in SW. Just wasn't worth it.
Clickbait. The author was offered a standard severance package when he was terminated. Nearly all severance packages ask for non-disparagement.
Severance helps people make the transition to their next job, but it also serves the company by preventing you from suing for wrongful termination or saying bad things about the company.
@dang, this person is right. The title is clickbait; the author wasn't offered hush money to not report or blog about something. They were offered money for signing a severance agreement with NDA:
> What did surprise me was the offer BCG made to me as I was on the way out the door. In exchange for me signing an agreement, BCG would give me the rough equivalent of $16,000 in UAE dirhams. Much of it looked boilerplate, like any common compromise agreement used in Europe — in return for some money, I would stipulate that I hadn’t been discriminated against on the basis of race or gender, etc.
> But the rest was very clearly a non-disclosure agreement
Also, maybe everyone at MIT knows who "BCG" is, but nobody outside MIT does, that's for sure.
Really enjoyed this article. Old business partner was at McKinsey and shared a lot of similar things with me. One oddity is how low $16k is. Their salaries are above average big by comparison. Could be they just cheaped out and thought it was adequate but it feels quite small to what I'd expect.
[+] [-] jrochkind1|3 years ago|reply
That's pretty profound, and indeed I think it's not uncommon for people to get very burned out on very light workloads, as in OP, which OP has explained neatly.
[+] [-] dspillett|3 years ago|reply
If you have an outwardly light task with onerous implications (just feeling you are being dishonest, as in these examples, can easily be enough) or very stressful segments, you aren't just dealing with the stress during the hours you are officially clocked-on, you will be thinking about it throughout chunks of the rest of your day. It may even inhibit sleep to an extent. Time away from a stressful situation is often not stress free time.
Unless of course you are one of those lucky people who can reliably switch these thoughts on and off at appropriate times, mentally shift responsibility ("not my job to keep that correct, guv'ner") without guilt, or lack the awareness for these issues to even present themselves at all. See "how do politicians and lobbyists sleep at night"!
[+] [-] nipponese|3 years ago|reply
In my day job, I work with Roblox developers, all whom either dropped out or never went to college to be full-time Roblox devs. They are so motivated by being on the platform that they will happily spend 8+ hours a day re-creating MS Office products on Roblox for our clients.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|3 years ago|reply
I was a manager, for a long time. Before that (and after), an engineer.
In the early days of being a manager, I was able to also be an IC on most projects, and my work counted for a lot.
However, my handlers did not approve of me "getting my hands dirty," and, quite often, explicitly interfered with efforts on my part, to be a technical contributor.
The last couple of years absolutely sucked. My team was burning out, and I wanted to pitch in and help, but I wasn't allowed to. The startup we worked with, wanted me to. The work was interesting as hell (however, in the long run, it never worked out). It was pretty much exactly in my wheelhouse.
Instead, I ended up sitting on my butt, trying to keep track of a chaotic situation, without imposing on my engineers, and waiting for stuff to happen.
That was real burnout. I didn't want to go into the office, anymore.
Eventually, my wish came true, and they disbanded my team, after that project went pear-shaped. Could I have made the difference? Almost certainly not, but I probably could have made a difference.
Since leaving that company, I have been working pretty much seven days a week, often, from early morning, until hitting the sack.
I have not felt even a tiny bit burned out.
[+] [-] hospitalJail|3 years ago|reply
I also wonder if this is a 'getting older' thing. When I was young, I had all the time to do anything. I had no money or opportunity, so when an opportunity came along I would go 100% into it.
Now that I have money, education, and experience, I have nearly endless options. I try to do the ones that suck least and have good ROI.
[+] [-] nevinera|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hosh|3 years ago|reply
You can still kill yourself on onerous yet meaningful work, but you'll also die fufilled and self-actualized.
[+] [-] riedel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trelane|3 years ago|reply
It's not that the work was hard, it was just kinda stupid.
[+] [-] wpietri|3 years ago|reply
And I salute anybody who turns down hush money. When I was laid off from Twitter they offered me something like $40k to sign a non-disparagement clause. It's been years, but I still owe them at least $30k of disparagement. This guy really got his money's worth.
[+] [-] willhinsa|3 years ago|reply
Thank you for the chuckle this gave me!
[+] [-] tootie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JackFr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandigangi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordnacho|3 years ago|reply
The work isn't what it says on the tin. You may learn something about some area of business, that much is true, but you're not really advising people, you're producing slides that give your firm's rubber stamp on whatever has already been decided.
You get put into awkward positions. Someone close to me ended up doing a presentation to the governor of the Bank of England, at age 23. Clearly this person did not know much that the boss didn't already know, but the consultancy charged the Bank nonetheless.
Perhaps just one of dozens of people I've spoken to about this career thinks it was a good choice.
[+] [-] WastingMyTime89|3 years ago|reply
Consulting is very uneven and as a new hire, being assigned to one or the other is mostly down to luck. That’s fine because at its heart consulting is mainly about managing your clients and their expectations and that’s something you can learn in both kind of jobs.
A big difference between small and prestigious consulting firms will be how insufferably full of themselves your colleagues are however. It has a significant impact on how the job feels on a daily basis.
[+] [-] xivzgrev|3 years ago|reply
There's a certain kind of person who thrives in consulting and good for them - it pays really well, you're seen as an expert, and for partners it's pretty 9-5.
But it requires a very clear line of ownership - like this article alluded to, if a client wants to piss away $1 billion, that's their choice. I'm here to support you however. I'll disagree, but not too hard.
If you can walk that line, and sprint for the ~10 years to get there, it can be a very good life.
[+] [-] ethbr0|3 years ago|reply
Who's to blame?
Well, I'm inclined to trace the temporal chain and say it starts with the client.
If you hire a consultancy and say "I want to figure out X, Y, and Z by doing A, B, and C, and show me your work" then that's a very different engagement.
But it requires you to know your business, and a surprising number of clients don't.
[+] [-] curiousllama|3 years ago|reply
Add "and one random commenter on HN"
Consulting is a social exercise, not an intellectual one.
[+] [-] cbozeman|3 years ago|reply
Here's the truth that no one wants to admit to: People aren't looking for advice. Ever. They're looking for affirmation on the choice to which they've already made and are going to commit.
That's what they want. That's what "consulting" is. That's what "advice" is.
And it's all useless bullshit anyway. The reason it's all useless bullshit is because situations and circumstances are never the same across time and location. You could do exactly what Larry Ellison or Bill Gates or Elon Musk did in their lives, and you'll have a vastly different outcome, because the world isn't static - it's an endlessly dynamic system.
"Management consultant" isn't about consulting, and it sure as shit isn't about "management", other than "managing" the feelings of the people with whom you're dealing and making them feel like they're making a good choice.
The reason being, if that was an honest job, and you really were a recognized subject matter expert with decades of experience and knowledge in regards to whatever field you're hired to consult in, when you tell the client to do X and Y, they'd do X and Y. Well, if that's the fuckin' case, why do the clients so often do W and Z instead??
They're looking for validation of their idiotic, hare-brained idea... that's why. They're paying you to reassure them they're not as stupid as you know they are, and as dumb as they actually feel.
[+] [-] Bloating|3 years ago|reply
Local government can't make a decision without paying a consultant six figures
[+] [-] verisimi|3 years ago|reply
... which is all you need to realise to see how conspiracies occur, how politics is a dog and pony show, how finance is just the execution of pre-determined strategies. Reality is not unfolding naturally - there is a clear plan, to which a veneer of 'natural unfolding' is applied to carry most people along.
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|3 years ago|reply
I still can't believe there are people this naive. Just reading a newspaper for a year should dispel these myths. A glance through history shows the aftermath of countless free-market train crashes. It's like those economists who thought most people were rational. Crazy stuff.
[+] [-] klabb3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tablespoon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lozenge|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jollybean|3 years ago|reply
The free market has 'train crashes' just like the highway has 'car crashes'.
Most things of value are created by regulated markets.
We tend to only intervene when there are ugly monopoly areas (single access rights), and where pricing/elasticity cause problems (healthcare).
I mean you're literally on a site create but ultra captilists.
That said, there's no substitute for 'regular morality' I mean, beyond legalities etc.. I think it's assumptive in a lot of our systems, we just don't talk about it enough.
[+] [-] refurb|3 years ago|reply
I don't know about you, but despite the "train wrecks" in modern medicine, I'm still a believer.
[+] [-] Bloating|3 years ago|reply
Also, look up at the green grass
[+] [-] superchroma|3 years ago|reply
If you believe that as an employee of BCG, you're offering next to no value (as a yes man who makes snappy powerpoints to help squash the fleeting doubts of some architecturally aspirational minor royal), and that the actions of your clients are broadly unethical (destroying the planet, facilitating other people destroying the planet, cutting up diplomats, etc.), arguably, is it not ethically appropriate to act as a parasite for such clients to increase inertia in their operations and drain their ill-gotten gains?
[+] [-] pjsg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] that_guy_iain|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npilk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway713|3 years ago|reply
With a team of five consultants and their manager, months of useless hour long meetings to answer simple questions that can be looked up in the documentation, and plenty of slideshows and design docs that are mostly filled with fluff, they’ve produced... a dashboard that I could have put together in about 30 minutes.
Whatever social purpose this contract fulfills is a total mystery to me, but all I can think of is what a waste of human time this is.
[+] [-] inkcapmushroom|3 years ago|reply
This particular sentence struck a nerve. You can justify literally anything self-serving in this way; I had to beat that old man up and take his wallet, it was to pay for my hypothetical kids' college!
[+] [-] beachy|3 years ago|reply
Achieving this zen state is a primary goal of consulting firms working with public sector. After winning an initial brutal low balling battle with competitors, the goal is to transition to a model of a steady conveyor belt of non-competitive fluffy proposals for changes going one way to the client, and money flowing back the other way back to the firm.
[+] [-] anonu|3 years ago|reply
Gives a bit more background on consulting. I've always thought of it as a fluffy business but its still big business and the podcast breaks it down.
Interesting factoid: the "Chief of Staff" role in the White House was created thanks to McKinsey.
[+] [-] e2e4|3 years ago|reply
Trailer for season 1: https://youtu.be/pNLlHYJnj8I
[+] [-] andreareina|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if it was NEOM. But that's going to destroy a lot more than only $1 billion when all is said and done.
Edit: Oh, 2010. Never mind.
[+] [-] xpe|3 years ago|reply
My reply is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson [1]:
> A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool’s word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
[1] https://www.bartleby.com/5/104.html
[+] [-] kingkongjaffa|3 years ago|reply
Imagine signing up for MBB and thinking it was this. Completely misguided.
This post is ridiculous, the writer thought the business world was an academic meritocracy like (MIT). Also a silly notion.
Totally out of depth and naïve.
[+] [-] anon291|3 years ago|reply
I lasted six months, and am now happily employed in SW. Just wasn't worth it.
[+] [-] rsweeney21|3 years ago|reply
Severance helps people make the transition to their next job, but it also serves the company by preventing you from suing for wrongful termination or saying bad things about the company.
[+] [-] pydry|3 years ago|reply
Ive seen ones that do and ones that dont.
For the ones that do they all had a very good reason to want it.
[+] [-] phendrenad2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legohead|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|3 years ago|reply
> What did surprise me was the offer BCG made to me as I was on the way out the door. In exchange for me signing an agreement, BCG would give me the rough equivalent of $16,000 in UAE dirhams. Much of it looked boilerplate, like any common compromise agreement used in Europe — in return for some money, I would stipulate that I hadn’t been discriminated against on the basis of race or gender, etc.
> But the rest was very clearly a non-disclosure agreement
Also, maybe everyone at MIT knows who "BCG" is, but nobody outside MIT does, that's for sure.
[+] [-] dandigangi|3 years ago|reply