[TheCowboy]

In theory, there exist people who are exceptional at solving unique problems/challenges or managing things related to such endeavors. Some might specialize in certain classes of problems and gain experience solving variations for many companies. They might be both underutilized and underpaid in traditional companies for various reasons.

What if you built a company by recruiting such people and sold their expertise at a premium?

I also think assuming there's no real skill at any consulting company is probably a mistake. Or if anything, they're not just all "management consultants" and many of these places have tech consultancies as well. There are also tech companies that are basically specialized consultancies---compsec is probably a very visible area where it's a more common model and at least some firms get some respect for competence.

There's plenty of criticism for consulting firms and it can be very valid. You can probably even dig up stories of bad consulting experiences in the comments on HN.

But I've known people who worked at places where they didn't really have the talent to solve some unique problem, or their own people had caused the problems.

Good consultants will try to pick the brains of employees for insight that's been missed, ignored, or simply wasn't communicated well. They have have problem solving skills that overlap with a good software engineer, such as requirements gathering, communicating with managers, etc.