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Happy Monday, team:

• Get the McKinsey Opioid + Prison deliverables AND a chance to win $100 by using your custom link at the bottom to refer other consultants to So What?

• Keep giving us feedback by using the poll at the bottom - we’re tweaking things each week!

📰Consulting news + gossip 📰

👀Our favorite gossip this week👀

• Bain & Company reportedly does layoffs in India

• Deloitte consultant offended after being called a ‘soft Deloitte boy’  

• Citi welcomes former PwC US leader Tim Ryan

• McKinsey faces intense scrutiny over $200M of work in Canada

• Deloitte Global CEO joins USC board of trustees

• Alvarez & Marsal raids Big Four in push to expand deal advisory work

• Northwestern Kellogg 2023 grad can’t find a job, accepts $40k / year job as a customer support rep for Comcast with $160k in student debt

Top story: Financial Times declares the consulting industry is in a ‘crisis’

Former 2016 McKinsey Book of the Year award finalist Rana Foorohar declared that the consulting industry is in a crisis in her recent opinion piece in the Financial Times.

Foorohar argues that consulting firms often emphasize measurable metrics while neglecting crucial intangibles like culture and creativity. Companies hire consultants to deflect blame if solutions fail, a trend exacerbated by AI handling lower-end tasks. The industry is now under pressure, with firms like Bain and McKinsey downsizing, and revenue growth slowing to 5% last year.

Political scrutiny is also rising. A bill to ban McKinsey from U.S. government contracts, due to its dealings with China, recently passed a Senate committee. This bipartisan skepticism is echoed by academics, with critics arguing that consulting profits from capitalism's flaws while offering little value. Even former consultants, such as Ashley Goodall, in his book, "The Problem With Change," criticizes the obsession with change, arguing that it often overlooks real improvement.

Our view:

• The industry is undoubtedly under pressure right now

• Many of the core value propositions of consulting work remain unchanged - temporary augmentation of workforce, outsourced domain expertise, corporate accountability, 3rd party perspective

• Consulting firms are still able to win top talent from highly prestigious undergraduate and MBA institutions

• Consulting isn’t going anywhere, but the winners will embrace changes in AI and will shift more focus to implementation and performance-based fees

Read more here.

📈Show me the data📈

This is super frightening but what a great visualization. Makes the takeaway so obvious + intuitive.

💼 Exit opps 💼

We’ll plan to share a few opportunities that we see that seem interesting for someone with a consulting background. Focus on remote roles or roles in big US metros.

• [NEW] NBA2K Commercial Strategy & Operations Manager, Gaming, Remote,~4+ years of consulting experience, $90-130k

• Placer.ai Strategy & Operations Senior Manager, SaaS, Remote, ~6+ years of consulting experience, $140-160k 

• Headway Strategy & Ops Lead, Mental Health Tech, Remote, ~5 years of consulting experience,~$120-150k

• Stubhub Strategy Associate, NYC / Hybrid, ~2-4 years of consulting experience, $125-175k

• PayPal Senior Strategy Associate, NYC / Hybrid, ~2-4 years of consulting experience,~$53-135k

• ServiceNow Pricing Strategy Manager, Remote, ~3 years of consulting experience,~$120-210k

😂Memes😂

🤑Consulting Compensation Report🤑

📣How'd we do?📣

That’s all for now - we will circle back next week for another edition of So What? Use the poll below to tell us how we did 👇

Spicy McKinsey Decks + Chance to win $100 👀

It would be crazy not to tell a few of your consulting friends about this newsletter, right?

If you get three friends to sign up, you’ll be entered into a lottery for a $100 Venmo / Zelle (1 entry per person, selected at the end of June 2024). To sweeten the deal, we’ll send you two pretty spicy McKinsey decks when you refer just one person. Use the link below to refer!