[sysadmindotfail]

>Some of the smartest and most effective people work in consulting. The kind of people who can swoop in to a random company, size up their operations in a few weeks and spit out an actionable plan that really works.

This is a seriously underrated comment. While having sometimes dismal reputations, IT MSPs and (SWE, DevOps) staffing firms often having legitimate rockstars. Some of the best, most efficient engineers I have worked with were employed by these types of companies. This involves delivering solutions on time to the customer while retaining soft skills, often while being the enemy of the incumbent engineers.

[jhartwig]

Yep this has been my experience as well. Especially with Accenture. That said, someone quoted above, they have 700k+ employees. Im sure there is a ton of bad apples to go around. I have spent 20 years + in Financial Services and was always impressed with some of the teams involved in the M&A side of Accenture. They were very talented and dedicated to the cause.