[oytis]

Ah, OK, so there are actually people with real industry experience there? What happens with the young bright people when they are not young any more though? Are they expected to leave the company to gather real world experience or are they just promoted to "experts" without seeing anything outside their consultancy?

[ryanjshaw]

The trick is they pay the young bright people peanuts relative to what they bill them out for, so then market forces rotate the majority of them out of the consulting org automatically, often into positions at the companies they consulted for or into their own businesses.

So why do the young bright people do it to begin with? They get to work with experienced people, broad learning experiences in diverse industries, networking (= future job prospects), etc.

[raesene9]

Yep and IME it works a lot of the time. A number of people I worked with in IT/Infosec consulting are now CISOs of large orgs.

[raesene9]

Well they get some experience doing the consultancy work of course, and yep lots go off to industry after 2-3 years.

IME (Worked for E&Y some years back) about 80% of people who started as juniors would have left after 3-4 years with the other 20% staying to try and make partner.