[gpresot]

Former management consultant here (with one of the Big 3). It is true that some of this type of work (twisting analysis to fit conclusions) happens, but my experience has been the opposite, as in the medium-long term clients appreciate more the consultants that don't hide the truth, and in the end consulting partners want to keep long term relationships with the executives they work with. Consulting has offered me a lot. Money, but more importantly exciting projects that one usually doesn't work on at a relatively young age, the opportunity to learn how to structure communication effectively, how to manage stakeholders with opposing views (and how to become a bridge between them), how to break down a problem in pieces that are solvable with the experience and tools that you have. This in turn has accelerated my career (also outside of consulting). I also went back to consulting after working in industry.

Companies hire consultants for many reasons. In general they have the skills internally too, but unless they have overcapacity, their people have a day-job too and it is preferable to throw a group of smart and motivated mercenaries to solve a tough problem working full-time on it. Sometimes consultant are the only ones that are capable of liaising across functions and departments, without seeming skewed towards any particular one: as roles in industry tend to specialise ever more, this is becoming more and more important. And some problems (organization, process, etc) benefit a lot from an external view.

Sure, sometimes Mck, BCG, Bain (and many others) are used to provide validation for something that the CEO wants to do. But it happens a lot less often than people think.

[refurb]

This was my experience as well. In 2 years of consulting you might work on as many problems as 10 years in a corporate role. And the problems vary by functional area as well. The experience can be grueling, but very educational as well.

And consultants get hired for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes you’re just buying headcount for a special project, other time buying expertise in an area your company isn’t that strong in. And sometimes for an “independent voice”.

But the criticisms I read are kind of funny considering the clusterfucks some companies are. That was probably one of the more eye opening things. As an outsider who works with lots of clients the strengths and weakness of different organizations is really apparent.

[neuronic]

I feel exactly the same and would wager that some of the ultra-negative comments here are either the result of extreme examples of bad work (every company will deliver bad work at times) or they have been personally affected by the consequences of hiring strategic consulting firms, so they are the enemy from this point forward.

I used to work for Big 3 as well, in technology consulting (way way way before switching to become an actual dev somewhere else), so our analyses were targeted more towards offering a client a perspective on his technological standing compared to the rest of the industry. It was at a time were _the majority_ of European companies exhibited extreme skepticism towards public cloud infrastructure, for example, and putting laws, economic numbers, competitors and all that into perspective for a client can certainly be very valuable to drive some change.

For Big 3 however, I had a feeling that consultancy offerings were always a way to get the foot in the door to win clients for the accounting teams - who were pretty toxic about being the only "real" Big 3 employees and everyone else is inferior.