[HN Gopher] The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell (2010)
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The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell (2010)
Author : praptak
Score : 196 points
Date : 2022-09-07 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thetech.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thetech.com)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > This is the third in a four-part series on the author's
| experiences as a consultant in Dubai.
|
| Anyone found the others? I haven't but I only tried a little bit.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Sure:
|
| #1 https://thetech.com/2010/04/02/dubai-v130-n16
|
| #2 https://thetech.com/2010/04/06/dubai-v130-n17
|
| #4 https://thetech.com/2010/04/13/dubai-v130-n19
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Anyone who wants more consulting stories like this should read
| "House of Lies."
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| _" I'm a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not
| just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor
| and talents to society, but a robust moral system -- goods and
| services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices
| represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent
| the value that a worker provides to others."_
|
| I still can't believe there are people this naive. Just reading a
| newspaper for a year should dispel these myths. A glance through
| history shows the aftermath of countless free-market train
| crashes. It's like those economists who thought most people were
| _rational_. Crazy stuff.
| klabb3 wrote:
| There are indeed those that are shockingly naive, and they are
| likely the majority. To give the benefit of the doubt though,
| it is widely accepted, even within say the Austrian school,
| that free markets need guardrails, and those guardrails are
| kinda like Fermat's famous "I'd write out the proof but there's
| no space in the margin". People underestimate what is necessary
| to provide reasonable levels of information symmetry, a just
| legal system, what constitutes fraud and false advertising, and
| so on. In the real world, you have mega corps in one corner and
| individuals in another, so the game is never as fair as "I
| trade you my tomatoes for your oranges" leads you to believe.
| As a result, there's a wide range of opinions amongst free
| marketers. The loudest tend to be accepting of things like
| insider trading, sex work and even organ selling, although
| that's likely not representative of people who self-identify
| with free market ideology.
| user3939382 wrote:
| The system of the Roman Republic had term limits, no
| corporate lobbying, and no political parties, and they still
| had all kinds of corruption and problems. My theory is that
| any political system will inevitably inherit the
| characteristics of its constituent parts, human beings, who
| are almost always corrupt or corruptible.
|
| It's not due to coincidence that government corruption by the
| rich has been unsolved for thousands of years, across
| completely different civilizations, cultures, and places.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > corruption by the rich has been unsolved for thousands of
| years
|
| I guess we found the root cause :)
| [deleted]
| worik wrote:
| > no corporate lobbying
|
| > no political parties
|
| Really? I doubt it. I am no history scholar, but lobbying
| and grouping are so pervasive now I find it hard to believe
| they did not happen there and then
| user3939382 wrote:
| Yes really. There were of course wealthy families that
| had business interests looked after, but nothing like
| today where you have corporations whose power eclipses
| the state and calls the shots.
|
| The lack of parties is even more black and white, those
| alliances did not exist at all. Advancement in their
| political system was based on individual accomplishments
| and if anything they were incentivized to sabotage each
| other, which is one problem they had.
| tablespoon wrote:
| It's also seems self-contradictory. Another bit of free-market
| dogma is the economy is so complicated no one can understand
| it, but if that's the case how can anyone tell that "goods and
| services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices
| represent the true value of goods in society, and wages
| represent the value that a worker provides to others" and not
| bullshit games, like the consulting described in the OP. I feel
| it just collapses into circular reasoning: "define what the
| market does as good and true, therefore what the market does is
| good and true."
| lozenge wrote:
| Well, he did mention monopoly effects and negative
| externalities, but only as if they are minor "extra terms"
| rather than completely disproving his starting point.
| jollybean wrote:
| ? I can't believe there are still people who don't grasp that
| he's right.
|
| The free market has 'train crashes' just like the highway has
| 'car crashes'.
|
| Most things of value are created by regulated markets.
|
| We tend to only intervene when there are ugly monopoly areas
| (single access rights), and where pricing/elasticity cause
| problems (healthcare).
|
| I mean you're literally on a site create but ultra captilists.
|
| That said, there's no substitute for 'regular morality' I mean,
| beyond legalities etc.. I think it's assumptive in a lot of our
| systems, we just don't talk about it enough.
| Bloating wrote:
| yeah, this is just in issue in the US due to our "free
| markets". Never ever happens in countries with real socialism
|
| Also, look up at the green grass
| digb wrote:
| I mean they're basically a college student given the YOE and
| where this was published, sounds like the kid got mugged by
| reality. But yea, definitely jaw-droppingly naive.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > sounds like the kid got mugged by reality
|
| It's curmudgeonly of me, but he got mugged by MIT; which
| operated very much like the consultancy he went to work for.
| Promise everything, give the client what they want, ignore
| the obvious problems in the proposal and let the client take
| the hit if that's what they want so desperately.. just give
| them the rubber stamp.
|
| So, he took his MIT rubber stamp out into the real world and
| found out how much "double class load" was NOT like "actual
| paid work."
| blantonl wrote:
| 50% of consulting work as a business consultant can be summed up
| in one phrase:
|
| "Shut up and color"
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| I think the headline is misleading. The author was offered a
| standard corporate severance deal, which had a standard non-
| disclosure, in return for a very standard (even low) severance
| package. He was not offered money for silence on his specific
| story.
| rejor121 wrote:
| Good article. Looking forward to the next part
| ahmadss wrote:
| this was written in 2010. here are all of Keith's articles
|
| https://thetech.com/authors/keith-yost
|
| but not sure if he ever wrote a followup. here's his AMA on
| reddit:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kde8s/iama_former_bus...
| mring33621 wrote:
| I think the author of this went to MIT.
|
| But I can't be sure.
| lordnacho wrote:
| This is pretty much what every consultant I've met in a personal
| setting has ever said to me. MBB, Big 4, boutique, all of them.
|
| The work isn't what it says on the tin. You may learn something
| about some area of business, that much is true, but you're not
| really advising people, you're producing slides that give your
| firm's rubber stamp on whatever has already been decided.
|
| You get put into awkward positions. Someone close to me ended up
| doing a presentation to the governor of the Bank of England, at
| age 23. Clearly this person did not know much that the boss
| didn't already know, but the consultancy charged the Bank
| nonetheless.
|
| Perhaps just one of dozens of people I've spoken to about this
| career thinks it was a good choice.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Ex-consultant here. It's an amazing choice to get into
| business...then gtfo.
|
| There's a certain kind of person who thrives in consulting and
| good for them - it pays really well, you're seen as an expert,
| and for partners it's pretty 9-5.
|
| But it requires a very clear line of ownership - like this
| article alluded to, if a client wants to piss away $1 billion,
| that's their choice. I'm here to support you however. I'll
| disagree, but not too hard.
|
| If you can walk that line, and sprint for the ~10 years to get
| there, it can be a very good life.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > This is pretty much what every consultant I've met in a
| personal setting has ever said to me. MBB, Big 4, boutique, all
| of them.
|
| Add "and one random commenter on HN"
|
| Consulting is a social exercise, not an intellectual one.
| verisimi wrote:
| > The work isn't what it says on the tin. You may learn
| something about some area of business, that much is true, but
| you're not really advising people, you're producing slides that
| give your firm's rubber stamp on whatever has already been
| decided.
|
| ... which is all you need to realise to see how conspiracies
| occur, how politics is a dog and pony show, how finance is just
| the execution of pre-determined strategies. Reality is not
| unfolding naturally - there is a clear plan, to which a veneer
| of 'natural unfolding' is applied to carry most people along.
| rendall wrote:
| I'm not sure how you get there from the quote
| verisimi wrote:
| > you're NOT really advising people, you're producing
| slides that give your firm's _rubber stamp_ on _whatever
| has already been decided_
| Bloating wrote:
| its called CYA
|
| Local government can't make a decision without paying a
| consultant six figures
| umeshunni wrote:
| Not just local governments, but most large corporations as
| well.
| the_af wrote:
| Not just large corporations, startups too. It's
| embarrassing the kind of consultancy a mid-size startup can
| hire.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| It's not that bad. Plenty of boutique do genuine very
| specialised work and both MBB and Big 4 have both interesting
| missions and rubber stamping ones.
|
| Consulting is very uneven and as a new hire, being assigned to
| one or the other is mostly down to luck. That's fine because at
| its heart consulting is mainly about managing your clients and
| their expectations and that's something you can learn in both
| kind of jobs.
|
| A big difference between small and prestigious consulting firms
| will be how insufferably full of themselves your colleagues are
| however. It has a significant impact on how the job feels on a
| daily basis.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > but you're not really advising people, you're producing
| slides that give your firm's rubber stamp on whatever has
| already been decided.
|
| Here's the truth that no one wants to admit to: People aren't
| looking for advice. Ever. They're looking for affirmation on
| the choice to which they've already made and are going to
| commit.
|
| That's what they want. That's what "consulting" is. That's what
| "advice" is.
|
| And it's all useless bullshit anyway. The reason it's all
| useless bullshit is because situations and circumstances are
| never the same across time and location. You could do exactly
| what Larry Ellison or Bill Gates or Elon Musk did in their
| lives, and you'll have a vastly different outcome, because the
| world isn't static - it's an endlessly dynamic system.
|
| "Management consultant" isn't about consulting, and it sure as
| shit isn't about "management", other than "managing" the
| feelings of the people with whom you're dealing and making them
| feel like they're making a good choice.
|
| The reason being, if that was an honest job, and you really
| were a recognized subject matter expert with decades of
| experience and knowledge in regards to whatever field you're
| hired to consult in, when you tell the client to do X and Y,
| they'd do X and Y. Well, if that's the fuckin' case, why do the
| clients so often do W and Z instead??
|
| They're looking for validation of their idiotic, hare-brained
| idea... that's why. They're paying you to reassure them they're
| not as stupid as you know they are, and as dumb as they
| actually feel.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Part of the issue is that the entire game is individuals in
| companies saying "We have free money!" and consultancies
| responding "We'll take that money!"
|
| Who's to blame?
|
| Well, I'm inclined to trace the temporal chain and say it
| starts with the client.
|
| If you hire a consultancy and say "I want to figure out X, Y,
| and Z by doing A, B, and C, and show me your work" then that's
| a very different engagement.
|
| But it requires you to know your business, and a surprising
| number of clients don't.
| glonq wrote:
| In 2010ish, I worked at a place that did various things for a
| Dubai gov't-owned development company that had invested in us.
|
| What exactly did we do? I'm not sure. There was lots of meetings.
| And proposals. And trips to Dubai. And nice dinners. And
| executives with vague titles like "VP Special Projects".
|
| I think Dubai's economy fizzed out at about the same time that we
| discovered our owner was squandering/embezzling their investments
| in us.
| e2e4 wrote:
| Highly recommend watching management consulting tv drama/comedy -
| House of Lies
|
| Trailer for season 1: https://youtu.be/pNLlHYJnj8I
| npilk wrote:
| Based on my own experience at McKinsey and what I heard from
| coworkers, I think the author's experience comes from a mixture
| of the realities of management consulting and the realities of
| working in the Dubai office. For whatever reason, my colleagues
| who spent time in that office described poorly-defined projects,
| unmotivated clients, and rubber-stamping that went well beyond
| anything I experienced in the US.
| jollybean wrote:
| People vastly overstate the implications from one-sided
| anecdotes.
|
| Not only are these firms 'different at every office' even
| within the same office it varies a lot.
| pjsg wrote:
| When I was a consultant, the saying was A
| consultant is someone who borrows the client's watch, tells them
| the time, and keeps the watch.
|
| In doing consulting, my biggest failure was turning down a class
| A network for the client (the client ended up with 6 /16s
| equivalents -- worth _far_ more than what they paid me). I turned
| down $600M worth of IPv4 space at today 's prices.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| I started my career as a programmer in the late 90s, the golden
| age of consultants.
|
| Two jokes from that era that reveal how they were viewed by the
| rank-and-file:
|
| ---
|
| A young zookeeper walks into the zoo on her first day of work.
| As she was being given the tour she notices 3 cages each
| containing a monkey and a computer.
|
| "What's with these monkeys?" she asked her new boss.
|
| "An amazing experiment. Look at this one" he said, pointing at
| the first cage. The monkey was sitting beside a small pile of
| bananas while happily typing on the keyboard - occasionally
| stopping to take a bite.
|
| "This monkey will produce over 200 lines of Visual Basic a day
| so long as it gets a few bananas."
|
| "Wow! What about this one", said the new hire, pointing the to
| second cage where the monkey was typing faster next to a larger
| pile of bananas.
|
| "That monkey eats more but produces over 300 lines of fully
| debugged Java a day"
|
| The trainee was astounded and pointed to the last cage, where
| the monkey was sitting on top of a huge pile of bananas,
| seemingly asleep. "What about that last monkey? He has the most
| bananas but doesn't appear to be doing anything."
|
| "We don't know what that monkey does," explained the boss, "but
| he calls himself a consultant"
|
| ---
|
| What is the difference between a shopping cart with a broken
| wheel and a consultant?
|
| The shopping cart seems to have a mind of its own but you can
| fit a lot more food and drink inside the consultant.
| kn100 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/VavYg
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I'm currently suing my previous employers for unfair dismissal in
| what is honestly a compliation of some of the most craziest work
| stories people I tell them to have heard. At the first settlement
| offer had a boilerplate clause that I could saying bad things
| about the employer and considering the nature of all the stories
| it would be a non-disclosure covering some epic stories. Reality
| is, I would rather be able to tell those stories than take any
| settlement. The stories while super stressful to go through are
| super fun to tell to people, they're just that crazy.
| reidjs wrote:
| Unless you tell us right now I'm going to assume you were in
| the wrong ;)
|
| Edit: saw your response, sounds crazy!
| peteradio wrote:
| I'm gonna sue him for non-disclosure.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Well?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| It's still going through the courts.
|
| But I feel bad not giving something and this isn't part of
| the legal case so, the CEO kicked my french bulldog puppy,
| called a former employee a slut, implied the only reason to
| respect the COO was to have sex with her, and by the end of
| it we highly suspected he beat his wife.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Was this a small startup? I've seen these terrible antics
| in smaller ones where the CEOs can hide better.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| A startup that was acquired and operating as its own
| entity. So basically still a small startup.
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| >The first clue that my mental picture of consulting was off came
| with "training" >in Munich. I expected instruction in Excel
| programming, data analysis, and >business theory.
|
| Imagine signing up for MBB and thinking it was this. Completely
| misguided.
|
| This post is ridiculous, the writer thought the business world
| was an academic meritocracy like (MIT). Also a silly notion.
|
| Totally out of depth and naive.
| the_af wrote:
| Not everybody has experience with consultancy work, and this
| doesn't make them or what they write "ridiculous".
| anonu wrote:
| Great Podcast and Great podcast episode on Mckinsey:
| https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/34553310/sheth-mckinse...
|
| Gives a bit more background on consulting. I've always thought of
| it as a fluffy business but its still big business and the
| podcast breaks it down.
|
| Interesting factoid: the "Chief of Staff" role in the White House
| was created thanks to McKinsey.
| anon291 wrote:
| Happy to talk about my experiences at Bain & Co (very similar to
| this). After four years of undergrad in Math & CS, and four
| summers of internships, I decided I no longer wanted to do
| software engineering. Thus, I applied and was accepted to
| strategy consulting.
|
| I lasted six months, and am now happily employed in SW. Just
| wasn't worth it.
| capableweb wrote:
| Not mentioned here in the comments (and slightly unclear if you
| only read the title) is that the $16,000 was not USD but $16,000
| AED, so about ~$60,000 USD.
| umeshunni wrote:
| USD/AED is 3.67, so 16K AED is USD 4360
| philsnow wrote:
| > BCG would give me the rough equivalent of $16,000 in UAE
| dirhams
|
| I read that as enough AED to be equivalent to ~$16k USD.
| insightcheck wrote:
| Agreed. Dirhams is the unit, so it would be "16,000 dirhams,"
| not $16,000 in dirhams.
| [deleted]
| grech wrote:
| 1 USD = 3.6 AED
|
| Also, the article states that the offer was for $16,000 in
| equivalent local currency, so ~AED60,000.
| andreareina wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26986675 (1y
| ago, 261 points, 182 comments)
| runnerup wrote:
| Top comment there is:
|
| > The experience taught me a lot about business and business
| leadership. Many times I'd ask myself "what would McKinsey or
| BCG do here?" Then I'd go do the exact opposite. That's proven
| a good course of action at many critical junctures.
|
| While this agrees with my personal impression "in bulk" it's
| worth noting that there are exceptions. McKinsey is currently
| focusing heavily on hiring actually accomplished top engineers
| from production environment...specifically targeting those with
| 6-10 YOE who may have hired into a "lesser" company during a
| recession or market downturn than they should have qualified
| for their graduation year of college. They're hiring engineers
| who have had outsized / personally unexpected (by the engineer)
| success with changes to processes or best engineering practices
| that ended up being rolled out to wide swaths of their company,
| or globally across the org.
|
| They are also specifically looking among those effective
| engineers for who can also speak competently with many layers
| of an org - not just the business people but also lend help and
| expertise on the technical side and gain trust through
| competence.
|
| The experienced engineers I know that they've picked up are
| among the best industrial / process / manufacturing engineers
| that I've ever known and are insanely technically competent.
|
| But I also think these are hired into relatively small, niche
| groups and offices. The bulk of the consultant pool are still
| fresh MBAs, maybe with limited but glamorous resume fillers.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Yes even McKinsey had to realise at some point that the bulk
| of the money was now in IT consulting, prestige be damned.
| But I have to give you that they have spun a good tale around
| it as usual.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Current McKinsey. It's a big decentralized firm so it's
| hard to say definitively what other groups are doing but I
| don't think we're doing "IT consulting" if you mean the
| body shops that do implementation work like Accenture.
|
| The engineers and folks are mostly because we need to do a
| lot of stuff with analytics and working with different
| platforms as needed.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I knew it would touch a nerve but yes, McKinsey is
| currently doing things which are not very far from what
| Accenture is doing minus the putting developers in seats
| part and that's very much what I would call IT consulting
| - quotes non included because I still don't like smelling
| my own fart enough to despise actual work.
|
| You could try to spin it and say they only touch the high
| value complex parts of issues - I will concede that if
| there is one thing McKinsey is good at invoicing aside
| it's putting a shiny coat of paint on things - but the
| reality is they do relatively unglamorous and low brow
| things for the money.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > I knew it would touch a nerve but yes
|
| Am I supposed to be upset if you think some parts of the
| company I work at do IT consulting?
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Market for lemons.
| abraae wrote:
| > Analytical skills were overrated, for the simple reason that
| clients usually didn't know why they had hired us. They sent us
| vague requests for proposal, we returned vague case proposals,
| and by the time we were hired, no one was the wiser as to why
| exactly we were there.
|
| Achieving this zen state is a primary goal of consulting firms
| working with public sector. After winning an initial brutal low
| balling battle with competitors, the goal is to transition to a
| model of a steady conveyor belt of non-competitive fluffy
| proposals for changes going one way to the client, and money
| flowing back the other way back to the firm.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Former consultant here. I once got staffed on a project to
| "predict the economy"
|
| Not an exaggeration - it failed (obviously) to the tune of $2M.
| And then the client bought another $5M extension on a different
| project.
|
| Consulting is so insane sometimes.
| rendall wrote:
| > _It was clear that the client was going to go forward with
| their decision regardless of how I acted. How could I be
| responsible for a foregone conclusion?_
|
| I wonder if it was NEOM. But that's going to destroy a lot more
| than only $1 billion when all is said and done.
|
| Edit: Oh, 2010. Never mind.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Also a different country...
| rendall wrote:
| Their clients were only Emiratis? I did not see that in the
| article.
| zinglersen wrote:
| Do you have any insights on Neom?
| rendall wrote:
| Just public info.
|
| This is quite a sober and reasonable analysis from an
| architect https://youtu.be/2b7uMJkvS0o
|
| A comment from a consultant, on Astral Codex Ten
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/model-city-
| monday-8122...
|
| Not to mention Scott Alexander's writeup:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/model-city-monday-8122
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > What I learned is that burning out isn't just about work load,
| it's about work load being greater than the motivation to do
| work.
|
| That's pretty profound, and indeed I think it's not uncommon for
| people to get very burned out on very light workloads, as in OP,
| which OP has explained neatly.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I found that to be the case, with me.
|
| I was a manager, for a long time. Before that (and after), an
| engineer.
|
| In the early days of being a manager, I was able to also be an
| IC on most projects, and my work counted for a lot.
|
| However, my handlers did not approve of me "getting my hands
| dirty," and, quite often, explicitly interfered with efforts on
| my part, to be a technical contributor.
|
| The last couple of years absolutely _sucked_. My team was
| burning out, and I wanted to pitch in and help, but I wasn 't
| allowed to. The startup we worked with, wanted me to. The work
| was interesting as hell (however, in the long run, it never
| worked out). It was pretty much exactly in my wheelhouse.
|
| Instead, I ended up sitting on my butt, trying to keep track of
| a chaotic situation, without imposing on my engineers, and
| waiting for stuff to happen.
|
| That was _real_ burnout. I didn 't want to go into the office,
| anymore.
|
| Eventually, my wish came true, and they disbanded my team,
| after that project went pear-shaped. Could I have made _the_
| difference? Almost certainly not, but I probably could have
| made _a_ difference.
|
| Since leaving that company, I have been working pretty much
| seven days a week, often, from early morning, until hitting the
| sack.
|
| I have not felt even a tiny bit burned out.
| riedel wrote:
| You are partially mixing cause and symptoms. My burn out was
| totally erasing my motivation until I did not want to get up
| anymore. The cause was IMHO too much subconscious stress on
| multiple levels that kept my anxiety too high. But it is true
| that what follows is a downward spiral (which makes the
| statement true again: you however are unlikely to fix it by
| adding motivation)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Maybe there are different kinds of burnout.
|
| The reason that statement seemed profound to me is because I
| have had experiences where I was doing something that was
| _easy_ , that didn't involve any unethical behavior in this
| case, but it just seemed _useless_ to me. I didn 't care
| about it, I didn't find the work rewarding at all. And it led
| to burnout, eventually. Eventually I couldn't manage to get
| any of the (formerly easy) work done. It was still easy work.
| I was just burned out from doing work I had no interest in
| doing, even though it was easy. It wasn't really about
| stress, the work was easy, there wasn't too much stress.
|
| You're right that my motivation dropped as I got burned out
| -- that's why I couldn't even accomplish the formerly easy
| task anymore. But I never really _cared_ about it, which is I
| think why it led to burnout. If I had found the easy work
| really important and rewarding, I didn 't think it would have
| led to burn out. Maybe "motivation" isn't the right word, or
| maybe motivation can mean a few things at a few levels...
| nipponese wrote:
| In my experience this is a highly underrated statement.
|
| In my day job, I work with Roblox developers, all whom either
| dropped out or never went to college to be full-time Roblox
| devs. They are so motivated by being on the platform that they
| will happily spend 8+ hours a day re-creating MS Office
| products on Roblox for our clients.
| duxup wrote:
| My son plays a lot and I watch.
|
| The creativity, whimsy, and fun is off the charts. I find it
| very appealing compared to the "outside" gaming world.
|
| I tell my son "Hey you know what if they had a game about
| bugs and you---"
|
| "Dad they have that."
|
| "But what if they--"
|
| "Yeah dad that's exactly how it plays."
| nipponese wrote:
| I agree. Additionally, the velocity of development blows me
| away.
|
| I frequently ask them, "why Roblox?" and the answer is so
| obvious I feel dumb every time: Time investment to stand up
| a fully network-enabled multiplayer game with a "metaverse"
| UGC catalog, user account management, and "good enough"
| trust and safety is literally as fast as the dev can click
| "Create" and "Play".
| hospitalJail wrote:
| "I believed I was invincible. If MIT couldn't burn me out,
| nothing else ever could. It took roughly three months before
| BCG disproved my "burn-out proof" theory"
|
| I also wonder if this is a 'getting older' thing. When I was
| young, I had all the time to do anything. I had no money or
| opportunity, so when an opportunity came along I would go 100%
| into it.
|
| Now that I have money, education, and experience, I have nearly
| endless options. I try to do the ones that suck least and have
| good ROI.
| hosh wrote:
| I agree it is profound. I think the key is whether the workload
| is meaningful or purposeful; motivation being a proxy for how
| meaningful the work is. That meaning is both intrinsic
| (something someone finds personally meaningful) and extrinsic
| (something that contributes meaningfully to a greater whole).
|
| You can still kill yourself on onerous yet meaningful work, but
| you'll also die fufilled and self-actualized.
| nevinera wrote:
| I think it mischaracterizes burnout entirely. Burnout is an
| internal process, and not one that can be defined in terms of
| external causes - you burn out when you are persisting against
| stress for long periods. There are certainly many standard
| recurring situations that can reliably cause such stress, but
| none of them are universal. In OP's case, it sounds like he's
| fairly motivated by his value-add, and found the prospect of
| functional dishonesty a major stressor (I'd have the same
| reaction).
| dspillett wrote:
| I think this mis-characterises where the burn-out often comes
| from.
|
| If you have an outwardly light task with onerous implications
| (just feeling you are being dishonest, as in these examples,
| can easily be enough) or very stressful segments, you aren't
| just dealing with the stress during the hours you are
| officially clocked-on, you will be thinking about it throughout
| chunks of the rest of your day. It may even inhibit sleep to an
| extent. Time away from a stressful situation is often not
| stress free time.
|
| Unless of course you are one of those lucky people who can
| reliably switch these thoughts on and off at appropriate times,
| mentally shift responsibility ("not my job to keep that
| correct, guv'ner") without guilt, or lack the awareness for
| these issues to even present themselves at all. See "how do
| politicians and lobbyists sleep at night"!
| justinlloyd wrote:
| > Unless of course you are one of those lucky people who can
| reliably switch these thoughts on and off at appropriate
| times
|
| I have no evidence or considrations one way or the other, but
| I wonder if people without an internal dialogue, without an
| inner voice, have less stress or anxiety because they never
| switch those thoughts on or off.
| trelane wrote:
| This relates with me deeply. I once was almost literally told
| to "work harder, not smarter." Fortunately for my sanity, I was
| able to leave that place soon thereafter.
|
| It's not that the work was hard, it was just kinda _stupid._
| tptacek wrote:
| The story is interesting, but the grabber in the headline is
| overblown: a severance tied to an exit agreement with an NDA is
| bog standard in consulting, especially if you're leaving due to a
| RIF, as this person seems to have been.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| >I wasn't sure at the time, but having had enough free time of
| late to ponder such questions, I think I've come to the
| conclusion that having a father who can pay for a top-notch
| education outweighs the disadvantage of being raised by a
| hypocrite. Sticking with the job for the sake of a paycheck
| passes the children test.
|
| This particular sentence struck a nerve. You can justify
| literally anything self-serving in this way; I had to beat that
| old man up and take his wallet, it was to pay for my hypothetical
| kids' college!
| scotty79 wrote:
| That's why you need to look at the deeds first and take
| justifications into account only optionally.
| wpietri wrote:
| I appreciate the brutal truth here about consulting. It took me a
| long time to realize that the goal wasn't to make something
| better or solve problems real. It was mostly about executive
| feelings, flattering people with money, and competition in
| dominance hierarchies. I don't do much consulting anymore.
|
| And I salute anybody who turns down hush money. When I was laid
| off from Twitter they offered me something like $40k to sign a
| non-disparagement clause. It's been years, but I still owe them
| at least $30k of disparagement. This guy really got his money's
| worth.
| tootie wrote:
| I spent a long time working in what you might call mid-tier
| consulting. We did a lot 6-8 figure consulting gigs at large
| corps mostly for digital and marketing projects, but also did
| some business strategy and product development. Sometimes we
| cross paths with Big 4 consultants who were embedded with the
| same client. We absolutely lived and died on our reputation and
| word of mouth for successful projects. The best engagements
| were the ones where we told clients they were asking for the
| wrong thing and needed to rethink their strategy. These were
| probably lower-level decisions than what Big 4 were doing, but
| still expensive things to get wrong. I've never seen or heard
| of anyone who has a positive opinion from the inside or out of
| the Big 4. It's like they are hired explicitly to draw up
| presentations to provide cover for knowingly wrong decisions
| that are already made.
| willhinsa wrote:
| > When I was laid off from Twitter they offered me something
| like $40k to sign a non-disparagement clause. It's been years,
| but I still owe them at least $30k of disparagement.
|
| Thank you for the chuckle this gave me!
| JackFr wrote:
| 16K for mutual non-disparagement isn't a serious offer. That's
| likely less than a month's salary for this guy. The message is
| they don't really care what he blabs about.
| cowsup wrote:
| The message is that 99% of employees will blindly sign it
| without reading it, so they don't see a point in having a
| large dollar amount. The amount is high enough that courts
| won't immediately throw it out, but low enough to not break
| the bank for the company.
| dandigangi wrote:
| Hurts though putting your head down when you're a problem
| solver and want to do what's best for a client. :(
| throwaway713 wrote:
| I work at one of the well-known tech companies. We have recently
| gone on a consultant hiring spree after previously having avoided
| external contractors for years.
|
| With a team of five consultants and their manager, months of
| useless hour long meetings to answer simple questions that can be
| looked up in the documentation, and plenty of slideshows and
| design docs that are mostly filled with fluff, they've
| produced... a dashboard that I could have put together in about
| 30 minutes.
|
| Whatever social purpose this contract fulfills is a total mystery
| to me, but all I can think of is what a waste of human time this
| is.
| superchroma wrote:
| Honestly not a very surprising story. Maybe it wasn't even worth
| skipping the $16k. Looking at the endless list of boondoggles
| undertaken by some of the middle eastern countries awash with
| oil, one can only surmise that there is a well staffed consultant
| class there who are very talented at never saying no, I can say
| I'm completely unsurprised about that.
|
| If you believe that as an employee of BCG, you're offering next
| to no value (as a yes man who makes snappy powerpoints to help
| squash the fleeting doubts of some architecturally aspirational
| minor royal), and that the actions of your clients are broadly
| unethical (destroying the planet, facilitating other people
| destroying the planet, cutting up diplomats, etc.), arguably, is
| it not ethically appropriate to act as a parasite for such
| clients to increase inertia in their operations and drain their
| ill-gotten gains?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| It was surprising to me.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| No, it's not a surprising story, but I don't think that is why
| he passed on the $16k. Rather I think that he was done being
| payed to suppress his conscience. And $16k to give up the
| freedom to discuss your life doesn't sound like a good deal to
| me (especially if you are not hurting for cash).
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| It may have been a bit more surprising in 2010 when this was
| written, before there were a lot more stories like this one
| being published.
| superchroma wrote:
| For me the shoe dropped after Palm Island #2 in Dubai, when
| they announced The World. It looked silly, didn't sell well
| and it didn't succeed cleanly and was immediately followed by
| the announcement of The Universe, where even the renders
| looked sloppy.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > is it not ethically appropriate to act as a parasite
|
| If you're surrounded by a transparently evil organization AND
| you profit from it, even if you _think_ you are doing good, you
| will likely be corrupted and trapped in a web of your own
| justifications that just happen to support the continuation of
| a fat pay check.
| lozenge wrote:
| If you want to undertake a boondoggle, why not skip the
| consulting and get right into it?
| umeshunni wrote:
| The consulting provides it with a veneer of legitimacy.
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| Clickbait. The author was offered a standard severance package
| when he was terminated. Nearly all severance packages ask for
| non-disparagement.
|
| Severance helps people make the transition to their next job, but
| it also serves the company by preventing you from suing for
| wrongful termination or saying bad things about the company.
| pydry wrote:
| >Nearly all severance packages ask for non-disparagement.
|
| Ive seen ones that do and ones that dont.
|
| For the ones that do they all had a very good reason to want
| it.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| @dang, this person is right. The title is clickbait; the author
| wasn't offered hush money to not report or blog about
| something. They were offered money for signing a severance
| agreement with NDA:
|
| > What did surprise me was the offer BCG made to me as I was on
| the way out the door. In exchange for me signing an agreement,
| BCG would give me the rough equivalent of $16,000 in UAE
| dirhams. Much of it looked boilerplate, like any common
| compromise agreement used in Europe -- in return for some
| money, I would stipulate that I hadn't been discriminated
| against on the basis of race or gender, etc.
|
| > But the rest was very clearly a non-disclosure agreement
|
| Also, maybe everyone at MIT knows who "BCG" is, but nobody
| outside MIT does, that's for sure.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| You are omitting the sentences immediately afterwards. "Non
| disclosure agreement" is just a word, the provisions are what
| are important.
|
| > Not only did it bar me from making any disparaging comments
| about BCG or my work experience, but I wouldn't even be
| allowed to reveal the existence of the non-disclosure
| agreement itself.
|
| I concede that the title is a bit sensationalist, but it is
| essentially accurate. BCG _did_ offer the author $16k to not
| write _anything_ about them, including this story.
|
| > Also, maybe everyone at MIT knows who "BCG" is, but nobody
| outside MIT does, that's for sure.
|
| I am not at MIT or even loosely affiliated with MIT. I know
| that BCG stands for Boston Consulting Group in the context of
| consulting. Also, it's kind of like IBM, you don't really
| need to know that it stands for International Business
| Machines, that cluster of initials has an identity all by
| itself in a certain context.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| BCG is one of the big three firms. Just like the big four
| accounting firms, they aren't known to the average person.
| That goes for just about every company outside the top brand
| names. In the context of the [business] world, BCG is known
| enough imo.
| legohead wrote:
| My conclusion after reading: $16,000 blog post
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| These clauses are indeed very standard boilerplate. I don't
| think people take them very seriously, although maybe they
| should.
| paxexmect wrote:
| "I worked hard at MIT. I routinely took seven to ten classes per
| semester". This is where I stopped believing the writer.
| dandigangi wrote:
| Really enjoyed this article. Old business partner was at McKinsey
| and shared a lot of similar things with me. One oddity is how low
| $16k is. Their salaries are above average big by comparison.
| Could be they just cheaped out and thought it was adequate but it
| feels quite small to what I'd expect.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Hmmm... I have a really hard time accounting with the MIT course
| load, which throws shade onto the rest of the article.
|
| Yes, I have no doubt large firms offer NDAs at separation. I
| regularly sign NDAs when I start a new job, and when I exit them.
| Each time, I am compensated. The exit NDAs are reasonably narrow,
| and limited in time. If I do not like them, I do not sign them or
| ask for changes. It is just as much "hush money" or "not to tell"
| money about the company culture, as it is about intellectual
| property. It does not read like the OP was forced, threatened or
| coerced. If so, it is abhorrent and should be trumpeted to all.
|
| > I worked hard at MIT. I routinely took seven to ten classes per
| semester and filled whatever hours were left in the day with
| part-time jobs and tutoring.
|
| MIT uses a combination of lectures/recitations,
| labs/design/field, and outside prep in 'units'. I converted the
| units to credits. Overall, a 1-credit course is 3 hours a week
| work. Most courses are 3 and 4 credit. If we take 50% of the ten
| classes at 3 credit, and 50% at 4 credit, that comes out to be 3
| _3_ 5 and 3 _4_ 5, or _105 hours_. At max that _120 hours a week_
| (10 courses @ 4 creds /class), and at minimum is still _63 hours
| a week_ (7 courses @ 3 creds /class).
|
| Full time load at MIT is 36 or more units, or 12 credits.[0]
|
| Three MIT units is approximately equal to one "semester hour" or
| credit.[1][2]
|
| First year students are limited to 60 units (20 credits)[3] and
|
| >you should note 48-54 units is still considered a typical load
| and advisable for most students. Requirements at MIT are
| structured so that you do not need to exceed 54 units per
| semester (or 48 in many cases) to successfully complete your
| degree in 4 years. [4]
|
| [0] https://registrar.mit.edu/registration-academics/student-
| sta...
|
| [1] https://ospa.utdallas.edu/semester-credit-hours-
| fall-2019-av...
|
| [2]
| https://registrar.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2018-12/calcul...
|
| [3] https://firstyear.mit.edu/academics-exploration/credit-
| limit...
|
| [4] https://firstyear.mit.edu/academics-exploration/credit-
| limit...
| veryunlikely wrote:
| "I worked hard at MIT. I routinely took seven to ten classes per
| semester". This is where I stopped believing the writer.
| sweettea wrote:
| As a MIT alum, 'worked hard' understates the difficulty of that
| many classes. There are a few people per class who do such
| incredible feats, and it's entirely reasonable to believe Keith
| Yost is one of them.
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