[jmheinkle]

Your observations are perfectly correct, the short answer is these are low quality (and sometimes exploitative) job shops. You should avoid.

What I think is going on is that consulting stratifies into two groups: high quality consulting exactly as you envision with high pay and freedom, and these consultancies which effectively are low quality labor.

Obviously avoid the later if you have no other choice. In addition to the shitty pay, you will suffer serious penalties to respect and the projects you’ll work on will be the least attractive (and sometimes shitty and dangerous in other ways).