[HN Gopher] Deloitte to refund the Australian government after u...
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Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in
$440k report
Author : fforflo
Score : 412 points
Date : 2025-10-07 07:51 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| dhotson wrote:
| Good to know.. if you defraud the Australian government and
| misuse tax payers money... the consequences are: partial refund.
| nullc wrote:
| That's how it went for Craig Wright, famous Satoshi imposter--
| prior to his bitcoin infamy he stole millions via fraudulent
| GST refunds and fraudulent refundable R&D tax credits then got
| caught attempting tens of millions more. He fled Australia,
| repaid part of the fraud and has generally been living it up
| elsewhere in the world with no further consequences from his
| tax fraud.
| an0malous wrote:
| If you're going to commit crimes, be ambitious. Theft,
| murder, and lying all have lesser punishments the bigger you
| go with them because you get grouped with the investor class
| that does these things all the time and has immunity from
| severe consequences
| nullc wrote:
| It really is the case-- Post Covid Wright's style of GST
| fraud[1] went pretty much viral and they did start heavy
| enforcement actions, but their videos are full of raiding
| the homes of people living in public housing who stole a
| few thousand. I guess if you stole enough to pay for a
| fancy law firm like Wright did, you're much better off.
|
| [Wright's whole Satoshi cosplay seems to have resulted from
| this fraud because when the ATO did catch him they asked
| the obvious question: "Where did the money you were
| supposedly spending come from in the first place?" Bitcoin
| was just hitting the news bigtime then so he claimed to be
| an early bitcoin miner, but the amounts in question were so
| large that he needed to eventually extend it to being
| Satoshi to try to make it make sense.]
|
| [1] in AU instead of not charging resellers sales tax
| businesses just apply to have their sales tax paid
| refunded, and it more or less works on the honor system. So
| you can spin up a bunch of on-paper businesses, make some
| sham sales between them-- the buying side claims the GST
| refund, the selling side just goes out of business without
| ever paying the sales tax.
| bearjaws wrote:
| To be fair this is pretty much how it has to work.
|
| Imagine one rogue employee out of 10 commits fraud, do you get
| all your money back? No you get the billable hours + damages
| for the fraud.
|
| If it worked the other way contracts would be longer than the
| actual work to be performed.
| oytis wrote:
| Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man
| had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would
| be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations
| and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own
| employees be in a better position to give you advice than people
| who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are
| googling and making presentations?
| brador wrote:
| When things go wrong you can blame the consultants so you don't
| get fired.
|
| Same reason all workplace PCs are Windows.
| flypps wrote:
| Taking responsibility so you can blame someone for your
| decisions and to find 'logical' Arguments for your decisions
| after you already made them but don't want to look stupid.
| raesene9 wrote:
| I think that's not quite the way consulting should, and to some
| extent does, work.
|
| The ideal goal of consultancies like Deloitte's is that they
| hire a small number of people with experience and combine them
| with a larger number of young bright people and have them come
| in to review and advise organizations. The people with
| experience (so who have worked in that field before) direct the
| engagement and the leg work is done by the juniors, producing a
| report for the customer.
|
| As to _why_ companies would choose to use consultancies, there
| 's a variety of reasons, some good, some less than good.
|
| - Outside perspective & experience. The consultancy has done
| engagements with other companies in your field and can provide
| that experience.
|
| - Neutral point of view. The consultancy _should_ be neutral to
| any internal politics within the organization.
|
| - Appeal to authority. Many times organizations use
| consultancies to provide evidence to external stakeholders that
| the thing they want to do is the right thing.
|
| Now that's not to say that it always (or even often) works out
| that way, but in theory at least, there are some not terrible
| reasons.
| oytis wrote:
| 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?
| raesene9 wrote:
| 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.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| piva00 wrote:
| I have a few acquaintances who grew in consulting to become
| partners who have never, ever, ever worked in the field they
| consult for. They've only done consulting, only looked
| through the lenses they were required to for the job they
| were asked to do with no real experience in the industry.
|
| The only person I know who ended up at a high-ish position at
| McKinsey with proper industry experience had as their only
| job being the founder of a company they worked quite hard for
| 15 years to build, and sold it. Still, it's someone who only
| had a narrow experience in their industry which is now
| advising companies in very unrelated fields.
| rwaksmunski wrote:
| Well, when you have a bad idea you want to implement but don't
| want to take responsibility for it, you keep on hiring
| consultants until you hear what you want to hear. Quality of
| the consulting is irrelevant and interns or AI will do just
| fine. When the project inevitably implodes, you blame the
| consultant. Your own employees will give you advice on what's
| best for the company, not necessary what's best for you so you
| stand on their neck until they quiet down and learn their
| place. By the time anyone figures out what happened you already
| moved on with outstanding resume bullet point.
| lnsru wrote:
| Exactly. These are paid villains to craft masterplan for
| multiple layoff rounds. Because the good and loving CEO loves
| everybody in his kingdom and can't hurt anyone. The paid
| consultants are the evil who laid those nice people off. The
| consultants are the part of modern faceless mega corporations
| to outsource decision making. The CEO is not liable for any
| decisions nowadays.
| thmsths wrote:
| And yet they still get paid as if they were...
| fragmede wrote:
| it's a trope at this point.
|
| I'm the CEO and I don't really like it when the annoying guy
| down the hall tells me what to do, so I'm gonna spend $50,000
| and have a team come in and interview everybody and then
| they'll tell me the same thing the annoying guy said, for
| years, but because they're outside consultants, I'll listen
| to them when they say it.
| gred wrote:
| > they'll tell me the same thing the annoying guy said, for
| years, but because they're outside consultants, I'll listen
| to them when they say it
|
| A tale as old as time:
|
| > Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by
| his disciples. [...] Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not
| without honor except in his own town, among his relatives
| and in his own home." He could not do any miracles there,
| except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He
| was amazed at their lack of faith. (Mark 6:1-6)
| heisenbit wrote:
| If your doctor suggests to take out your kidney would you
| seek a second option? There is a lot of B.S. but there are
| also cases where there has been value provided.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| >> you keep on hiring consultants until you hear what you
| want to hear.
|
| Sounds like a job that AI easily replaces
| xinu2020 wrote:
| Except for the accountability part. That's the main feature
| of consulting.
| defrost wrote:
| _When The Government Asks For An Independent Consultation_ |
| Utopia
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M7SzS_5PlQ
|
| pretty much covers it in under two minutes.
| simonw wrote:
| Aside from the thing where it's useful to have an outside
| (expensive) influence to help make your decisions sound more
| confident than they actually are, a genuinely useful side of
| consulting is as a form of knowledge laundering between
| companies.
|
| Let's say you're a supermarket chain. You have lots of problems
| that only a small number of other companies - your competitors!
| - also need to solve.
|
| If you hire a big enough consulting company, they will have a
| large amount of internalized knowledge relevant to those
| problems that they gained through previous projects working
| with your competitors.
|
| Of course, they're never going to deliberately reveal other
| company's internal secrets, or directly assign people to work
| with you who worked last week with your competition... but
| industry expertise and "best practices" still flow through
| these channels.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| In theory, there exist people who are exceptional at solving
| unique problems/challenges or managing things related to such
| endeavors. Some might specialize in certain classes of problems
| and gain experience solving variations for many companies. They
| might be both underutilized and underpaid in traditional
| companies for various reasons.
|
| What if you built a company by recruiting such people and sold
| their expertise at a premium?
|
| I also think assuming there's no real skill at any consulting
| company is probably a mistake. Or if anything, they're not just
| all "management consultants" and many of these places have tech
| consultancies as well. There are also tech companies that are
| basically specialized consultancies---compsec is probably a
| very visible area where it's a more common model and at least
| some firms get some respect for competence.
|
| There's plenty of criticism for consulting firms and it can be
| very valid. You can probably even dig up stories of bad
| consulting experiences in the comments on HN.
|
| But I've known people who worked at places where they didn't
| really have the talent to solve some unique problem, or their
| own people had caused the problems.
|
| Good consultants will try to pick the brains of employees for
| insight that's been missed, ignored, or simply wasn't
| communicated well. They have have problem solving skills that
| overlap with a good software engineer, such as requirements
| gathering, communicating with managers, etc.
| rwmj wrote:
| A couple of uses of consultants that I've seen at first hand:
|
| - They helped our company to negotiate the minefield of
| government R&D tax credits, by interviewing all the developers
| and assessing how much was R&D compared to the guidelines
| (which are complicated). I think this was a good use of
| consultants: You get someone with specialized knowledge, and
| unless you're an enormous company, you couldn't afford to have
| someone with this knowledge on staff all the time.
|
| - They ran a survey of our software development practices,
| which they also ran with many other software companies, and
| then compared our performance to the other companies. I think
| if you're a completely useless manager with no idea about
| software, then this could be good, as it might highlight
| obvious ways that you could improve your processes. For us, it
| was a waste of time and money.
| sigwinch wrote:
| These are good examples.
|
| 1. Since tax prep is siloed away from development, you don't
| know what you don't know about your company's tax and
| regulatory posture. You as a product owner don't know how it
| compares with the industry. You don't know the space of ways
| it can change.
|
| 2. But then, when they find that your development floor looks
| like everyone else, it's less than profound. This analysis is
| most valuable to the outliers; maybe a company that's merged
| and bought smaller ones and as a result needs to be told that
| they're out of shape.
| Intermernet wrote:
| The first of these I can see as valid, but it's an
| optimisation that is only needed because globally, taxation
| law is a deliberate mine-field deisgned to support
| consultants. The second is exactly as you read it.
| rwmj wrote:
| I agree, but especially in business we have to deal with
| the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Indeed, c'est la vie
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| > If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and
| right
|
| I love how you summarized 99.99% of influencers and
| lifestyle/business coaches.
| otikik wrote:
| It's not only "giving advice". "Consulting" includes a range of
| things, down to implementing software.
|
| The customers are big companies with huge budgets, and a lot of
| red tape. The guarantees they want the most are legal. If
| things don't go well in a project, or if a project isn't
| implemented on time, they want to have someone to sue. Someone
| that will not simply go bankrupt and disappear. "Quality" is
| almost a nice to have, compared to the legal guarantees.
|
| Enter the Consultancy companies. They have a huge amount of
| workers, a lot of them fresh out of university. The quality of
| the work they produce might not be great, but when problems
| arise, they can always throw more people at the problem (or to
| make them work longer unpaid hours). They are sometimes called
| "meatfarms", because of this. They will not go bankrupt easily.
|
| The way these companies develop software is by third parties,
| often overseas, sometimes, frequently via several intermediate
| companies, each one adding their cut.
|
| I must stress out that it work. Boring, soul-crushing at times.
| But it is not easy. Just dealing with the red tape is a job on
| itself. The kind of contract that needed to be written before a
| medium-sized project has to be very detailed. It details things
| like what will happen when the project derails, what will be
| the penalty and who will pay what. It's a small book.
|
| Source: I was one of those "fresh out of college" people when I
| joined Accenture. I once was asked to estimate how much would
| it cost to change one (static) website's scrollbar color from
| default to yellow. The quote for that change alone, perhaps 10
| LOC change implemented by someone in India, was 3000 euros.
| This was around 2010. I was glad when they offered me a
| severance package.
| SilverSlash wrote:
| > I once was asked to estimate how much would it cost to
| change one (static) website's scrollbar color from default to
| yellow. The quote for that change alone, perhaps 10 LOC
| change implemented by someone in India, was 3000 euros.
|
| This is absolutely insane and, quite honestly, hard to
| believe.
| fragmede wrote:
| Welcome to corporate life.
|
| You need sign offs, and translations - wait but isn't it
| just the scroll bar color? Yes but the color needs to fit
| in with the corporate colorscheme, so now we have to pull
| in the design team, and they're in Poland.
| kube-system wrote:
| If you ever dealt with any projects at bloated Fortune
| 500s, it's not really that hard to believe.
|
| Take five people at $200 an hour and drag them into three
| meetings. There's 3000 bucks right there.
|
| Or, take one consultant and buy them the last minute plane
| ticket, to write 10 lines of code, at a customer who
| insists that everything be done on-site.
|
| There's a whole lot of ways that a bloated company can blow
| $3000 really quickly.
| vintermann wrote:
| Leaders are usually insecure. They need validation. Management
| consultants give it, for money. In theory, they can take the
| blame if things go very wrong. But in practice, management
| consultants tell you to do what everyone else does, and that
| means both leaders and consultants are saved by the "nobody
| ever got fired for buying IBM" effect.
|
| But there's more to it than that. Your investors don't trust
| you if you're not the sort to trust Deloitte. (Your investors
| probably also invest in Deloitte, by the way.)
| kube-system wrote:
| The value of validation from a consultant normally doesn't
| have anything to do with insecurity. Most corporate leaders
| got where they are because they are quite secure, even to a
| fault. But, corporate politics is a mess at a lot of large
| organizations. Bringing in an external opinion, is a helpful
| defense to politically motivated decision-making.
| abxyz wrote:
| The trope you'll often hear in circles like ours is that big 4
| consultants exist to provide cover for unpopular decisions.
| That's sometimes true. However...
|
| Big corporations and governments aren't startups in which
| everyone is encouraged to do as they please in service of the
| mission. Corporations and governments hire people for very
| specific roles with very specific responsibilities. Stepping
| outside of your responsibilities is discouraged. Employees
| inside big organizations have to think, "how fucked am I if I
| make this decision and it goes wrong?". A startup can write off
| big losses without a second thought, a big corporate or
| government has to investigate.
|
| If you need to make a big decision, you don't let an intern
| take a shot at it, even if they are convinced they have the
| perfect idea, because if it goes wrong, it's on your head --
| which idiot let an intern fuck it up?
|
| You bring in consultants who are (ostensibly) experts so that
| your responsibility ends at having done the right thing and if
| anything goes wrong, it's not on your head.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I don't understand this comment you say:
|
| > The trope you'll often hear in circles like ours is that
| big 4 consultants exist to provide cover for unpopular
| decisions. That's sometimes true. However...
|
| And then in the rest of your comment you outline exactly that
| "consultants exist to provide cover for unpopular decisions".
| abxyz wrote:
| The trope is that an unpopular decision is made within the
| organization and then consultants are brought in to execute
| that unpopular decision and absorb the fallout as if it
| were the consultants decision.
|
| The reality is that people within a large bureaucratic
| organization often need a decision to be made that has
| impacts which extend beyond their narrowly defined
| responsibilities. Consultants are brought in to make the
| decision instead, to put space between the employees and
| the decision. The decision might be unpopular or popular,
| that's besides the point.
|
| If you're an employee with a role doing x, putting your
| head above the parapet and volunteering to do y, it's a
| huge risk, for little reward. Best case, the big corporate
| you work for gives you a pat on the back and a gift card.
| Worst case, you're the sacrificial lamb at the altar of
| accountability. Much easier to offload everything onto
| consultants to dodge any risk of being held accountable for
| a bad outcome.
|
| So, yes, consultants protect employees, but not in the
| cynical way the trope suggests.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I disagree that your take can not be considered cynical.
| Consultants are used as accountability sinks either way
| which I have always taken to be the main point of why
| it's considered immoral to use them.
|
| You just gave an explanation why it happens not that it
| is not immoral to do so.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Nope the trope is you bring in consultant as fall guys
| for your ideas
| tnolet wrote:
| Why do you have an accountant? Or a lawyer? It's the same
| thing. Corporations don't have all skills in house for a ton of
| things.
|
| I was an IT consultant. A big energy company wanted to go to
| the AWS cloud. Their folks were too busy and had no experience.
| We (my consultancy company) already had the knowledge.
|
| Consultants don't only give advice. In many cases, they also do
| the work. But advice is also a "product". If your in-house team
| does not have the knowledge or time, you hire a consultancy
| firm.
| reassess_blind wrote:
| If you have to navigate an area that you aren't an expert in
| nor have employees who are experts in it, it's probably wise to
| consult an expert.
|
| Whether they are actually an expert, or just someone with a
| deep, confident voice who tells you what you want to hear is
| another thing.
| protocolture wrote:
| You would be surprised how many companies dont have the
| expertise in house. And of that set, you would be surprised how
| many make financial and technical decisions based on no
| expertise and get themselves into all sorts of trouble.
|
| You may also be surprised how many companies have 1 guy in
| house who pretends to be an expert and does his damned best to
| prevent people getting hired who might out them.
|
| Good consultants come in, tell you how it should be done, with
| evidence. Better consultants then provide those services if
| needed on a project basis. Usually "Good Consultants" in the IT
| industry are absolute heavy weights. Like we carry a bunch of
| different skillsets where there are few other people in our
| country with the same experience, and no one can afford to
| carry that expertise on an ongoing basis, but lots of people
| are willing to pay for a couple hours a month.
|
| That ofc, does not reflect the sales channel for most
| consultancies. Sales is focused on finding anyone they can
| schmooze into paying for services. Generally where large
| consultancy firms are involved, the decision maker is treated
| like royalty. Usually it involves helping them cheat on their
| spouse or get access to drugs. Weeklong out of town trips,
| usually vegas, paid for by the consultancy, with a hefty petty
| cash card. Smaller decision makers might only get local
| strippers and beer.
|
| One time, I was involved where a company we were consulting to
| on X, was concerned they were being lied to by consultants on Y
| project, and we stepped in and sounded them out in a meeting in
| front of the client making it evident they were just being told
| to justify Dynamics CRM and Sharepoint at all costs.
| Intermernet wrote:
| The thing is, the original problem is one that "the free
| market" would say should fail. That company, without the
| expertise required to do the job, should fail.
|
| Having consultants do _anything_ in this situation is
| antithetical to the ideal of a company. The company should
| fail, OR, the consultants should advise that the company
| should either fail or gain the expertise to no longer require
| consultants.
|
| Obviously this isn't going to happen, and here we are.
| rolisz wrote:
| If they need the expertise only once every ten years? Then
| it makes no sense to have in house expertise. Or the
| company expands to a new market and they need new
| expertise. They can hire, but they don't know who to hire,
| so consultants come in to help them.
|
| So there's some free market reasons for this to exist.
| malfist wrote:
| In no environment is hiring outside help mean your not
| qualified to exist.
|
| Should a homeowner know how to replace a roof before they
| can own a house? Repair HVAC appliances, upgrade a switch
| label?
|
| If I don't know how to make a CPU should I not be allowed
| to buy a laptop?
|
| Hiring help from outside is how the free market works.
| Goods and _services_
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are so many different kinds of expertise, you can't
| have everything in house. The problem is that now you are
| going to have to hire someone for something that you are
| not qualified to do yourself, which almost automatically
| implies that you are not qualified to make that hire
| either. So everybody plays it safe and they hire the 'big
| names' because those have social proof, no matter how crap
| the actual interaction.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Yes, that's a more detailed way of saying what I mean,
| but without the snark against "the free market". The
| value provided by the big 4 is based on a universal
| acceptance of "play it safe, cover your ass" instead of
| "we provide quality advice". The big 4 have realised
| this, as near, captive market, and lowered their output
| accordingly.
| icetank wrote:
| There is a risk in hiring expertise. What if the idea turns
| out to not work? What if the company decides to not pursue
| the idea any further? Now you already hired and trained a
| bunch of people that are now useless.
| rcxdude wrote:
| If the company can usefully gain access to that expertise
| by paying a consultant, then why should that be a problem
| as far as the market is concerned? There's nothing in the
| idea of efficient markets that says anything about how the
| company or economic activity should be structured (in fact,
| there's an argument that having such activity be subject to
| market pressure could improve market efficiency).
|
| The main issue, of course, is that a truly efficient market
| is a theoretical construct that can only be approximated.
| And in practice the approximation is often quite poor:
| successful companies are usually only doing one or two
| things right to make their success, then doing most other
| things in a mediocre fashion, and usually one or two things
| just short of catastrophically badly.
| protocolture wrote:
| >The thing is, the original problem is one that "the free
| market" would say should fail. That company, without the
| expertise required to do the job, should fail.
|
| The free market doesnt say anything, the invisible hand is
| also silent. Have seen:
|
| 1. Additional round of investor funding to rescue the
| business based on doing it right this time.
|
| 2. Dip into family money to reorganise and rescue business
|
| 3. Uses us to correct their practices and then runs it
| themselves
|
| 4. Farm mortgage.
|
| I dont see how its antithetical, its a service. Businesses
| use other businesses services all the time.
| moron4hire wrote:
| And what about companies that purchase materials necessary
| to their business from 3rd party vendors? Should all
| companies that aren't 100% vertically integrated die, or
| just the ones purchasing services?
| mbesto wrote:
| > antithetical to the ideal of a company. The company
| should fail, OR, the consultants should advise that the
| company should either fail or gain the expertise to no
| longer require consultants.
|
| This is a super myopic. Company's don't operate in idyllic
| terms ("ideal of a company"). Company's exist to create
| customers. How they reach that is up to them, consultants
| or otherwise...there are no "rules" you have to follow to
| achieve it (other than obvious regulatory ones)
| jjkaczor wrote:
| ... Well, the "gang of 4" (of which Deloitte is one) - from
| my experience - doesn't have the good expertise in-house
| either - when needed, they subcontract or outsource to the
| specialists... (And I am speaking as someone who has worked
| alongside them, and also subcontracted with them - I
| generally warn my clients about the A/B/Z-team game and that
| they would be better off by contracting with smaller agencies
| or individuals who actually would "embed" better in their
| project/team/initiatives)
|
| And apparently so much so that they feel they can even use
| AI-created reports/materials...
| protocolture wrote:
| I once saw one of Deloittes competitors build up a really
| basic Dynamics CRM, and then sent in some of their junior
| analysts to convince the customer, that they should just
| change their business practices to conform to the CRM as
| presented. They charged ~15 million for the service.
|
| Deloitte really falls into the "We wined and dined and
| whored the decision maker" tranche.
| monch1962 wrote:
| Ex Director at a Big 4 consultancy here...
|
| While I've done more than enough Powerpoint presentations
| telling clients what they already knew but didn't want to say
| out loud, there are some circumstances where bringing in a
| consultancy is a very good option.
|
| Some examples:
|
| As a software/cloud/data/AI/cyber guy (I wore a few different
| hats over the years...), I regularly caught up with buddies
| working in legal, tax, audit, retail, space travel(!!) etc. for
| coffee chats. It's surprising how often those of us who
| specialise in one domain had breakthrough moments from offhand
| chats with specialists in other domains. Very few people get
| the opportunity to have these sorts of conversations, and it's
| amazing how often you learn something relevant for your own
| work situation over a quick coffee.
|
| When I needed expertise in one of those domains into one of my
| projects, I could send a message and almost always get someone
| on a call within a few hours. Very few organisations could get
| e.g. a high-ranking ex-NASA official on a call quickly to pick
| their brains, but I could.
|
| Lots of times organisations don't have the deep expertise
| and/or available people to deliver on their internal projects.
| When a major rail transport provider needs to work out how to
| going to deal with new government critical infrastructure
| regulations for their IT systems, it's consultancies who can
| pull all the right skills together to help them out.
|
| When there's a critical shortage of available IT skills in the
| marketplace, companies use consultancies to top up their
| workforce. Here in Australia, there were nowhere near enough
| GCP experts to go around for the last 4-5 years, so companies
| could either try to hire the very few people around at
| exorbitant rates, or tap a consultancy for resources.
|
| Big 4 consultancies in particular throw high-quality training
| at their technical staff like nowhere else I've seen. One
| reason: quality training = billable hours. I had people around
| me burn out from too much training, and I'm pretty sure regular
| companies don't have that problem. For all the pointless
| Powerpoint presentations we did, there's a sh1tload of
| technical expertise sitting in Big 4 consultancies, waiting to
| be tapped.
|
| Companies are always struggling with how to use the latest IT
| shiny tools properly. Right now it's AI - how can I use it to
| save costs or increase productivity? What are the ethical and
| legal implications that come with AI, and how can we deal with
| them? How can we deploy AI solutions securely? Which of our
| business problems are the best fit for AI solutions? How do we
| train our ops staff to keep these AI solutions running? - the
| list goes on and on.
|
| Now a lot of people here in HN know how to do these things, but
| how does a regular business tap into that expertise _and_
| filter out the bullshitters? The answer is they go to a
| consultancy that (they feel) they can hold accountable.
|
| On that point, sometimes execs in a company simply need someone
| to shield them from blame for unpopular decisions like mass
| layoffs. It's pretty well know that consultancies do a lot of
| that type of work, and they (justifiably or otherwise) cop a
| lot of crap over it so some exec can say "I didn't do it".
|
| I'm probably coming across as a huge fanboy of consultancies,
| but remember - I'm an _ex_ Big 4 guy. I think their influence
| is too large, particularly in government policy making; I 've
| encountered way more sociopaths in Big 4 leadership roles for
| it to be down to chance; by any measure staff turnover and burn
| out is very high, and I'm convinced that's by design.
|
| However, they have their place.
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| I've seen it where a project needs to get done but the company
| can't hire anyone for it due to firm wide hiring freezes. So in
| come the consultants to bang out a sloppy version 1. In the
| meantime you wait it out until you can hire a real team and
| gradually transition them in to rewrite what the consultants
| did. At least the company will have learned something from the
| consultants trying to implement the project. When your domain
| is complicated and has many dependencies there's some value in
| having anyone trying to figure that stuff out.
|
| Of course, when the project is inevitably a late, half
| functioning, buggy mess you get to blame the consultants.
| sauercrowd wrote:
| I think one part that gets easily overlooked is that they not
| in-house, and that's a feature.
|
| That means even when an in-house team has the same expertise,
| they have to adhere by in-house processes and hierarchy.
|
| If a CEO signs off a consultant contract, they dont play in the
| same arena, and can often side-step the hurdles an internal
| team would face, without anyone internally getting too upset
| (compared to an internal team side-stepping processes).
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Except the internal team that can do the same thing better
| and cheaper
| heisenbit wrote:
| There is not an internal team - there are multiple teams
| all giving their best to further their own interests. Which
| one do you trust?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Say you're some business, government agency, or whatever. You
| mainly focus on one or few core things (the product, or service
| you're providing).
|
| Suddenly you face change, maybe the markets are changing, or
| tech has come a long way - but in any case, it is in something
| which is either outside your area of expertise, or you don't
| have the resources to do it yourself.
|
| So instead of hiring N people to do that one thing, you pay
| external people to do it for you. This is especially attractive
| in agencies where you have budgets to consider, can't just hire
| workers on a whim, and where firing workers can be equally
| difficult.
|
| That's where consulting firms come in. Most big consulting
| firms tend to be huge, and have expert networks all over the
| world - so there's a decent likelihood they'll have someone
| that have knowledge in the problem you're looking to get
| solved. And they hire smart enough people that will toil away.
|
| In a good scenario the consultants will have interviewed you,
| taken a deep dive look into your organization, analyzed the
| data, and either answered out your problem, or laid out exactly
| what you need to solve that problem. Usually on the strategy
| side.
|
| For the implementation itself, you can either go to step 1 and
| hire people to do it, or hire some other consulting agency to
| actually do the implementation work.
|
| That's at least the ideal situation. Sometimes consultants are
| just hired to rubber stamp controversial leadership decisions,
| and to back up things that leadership can't get internal
| backing for.
| icedchai wrote:
| Many of the people hiring the "consultants" simply don't know
| any better. They are easily persuaded by stuffed shirts with AI
| generated slide decks yapping about cost savings, scale, and
| deep domain knowledge. Also, they want someone to blame when it
| all goes south.
| kube-system wrote:
| Consultants are just professional contractors. An organization
| will call them when they can't/won't/don't want to do it
| themselves.
| mbesto wrote:
| Consultant here!
|
| Two reasons:
|
| - Expertise
|
| - Bandwidth
|
| That's it. That's the reason you hire consultants. Your team
| either doesn't have the expertise or the bandwidth to do the
| work you require. Could you hire for expertise and bandwidth?
| Absolutely. Is it hard ($$) to do that? Yes, and in most cases
| it's arguably WAY harder, especially when the effort is
| episodic.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Often times you're just paying a consultant to recommend what
| you don't want to accept responsibility for. You pay a slight
| premium to launder the responsibility onto a third party.
|
| There's also asking for good advice for narrow problems from
| experts with decades of experience.
|
| Both of these play major roles and they're often very easy to
| tell apart.
| d--b wrote:
| Consulting firms are total crooks.
|
| Before they used AI, they used just-out-of-grad-school interns...
|
| People who've never work in consulting have no idea how crazy the
| gap is between the price of reports like these and the salary
| that's paid to the people actually writing them.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Well that's the core idea - build an environment of hungry
| folks who don't quite know how the world works and suck all
| that you can out of them.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| That's something worker unions can help with, by enlightening
| members what a reasonable salary is. These consultancy
| companies often underpay their consultants. Sometimes the
| salary is egregiously low with the excuse that they are
| providing some kind of preparatory education for some length
| of time. The work of that same consultant that is "in
| education" is then heavily overcharged for.
|
| I've heard some horror stories with these.
|
| tl;dr Make use of a good union or org to find out what a good
| salary is and don't get yourself ripped off.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| >Consulting firms are total crooks.
|
| Amen to that. They rip off the consolutant and the customer.
| tallytarik wrote:
| Our government has been paying Deloitte & co. to produce slop for
| years before AI was being used to generate said slop.
|
| Can we get a refund for all of the others too?
| kakacik wrote:
| AI is a trap too sweet to ignore. Its ruining young folks future
| by removing the hard effort part of learning, which then builds
| more resistant character which is more able to wade through daily
| crap of our adult lives. Some sort of patience with life, its not
| a skill that comes on its own.
|
| And clearly its (almost) everywhere, including companies who
| should do and know better. AI will make humanity more lazy seems
| to be the conclusion.
|
| Well fear not, those few who will not be lured by it will stand
| tall and far apart, and can achieve a lot more professionally and
| personally in crowds utterly reliant on their tiny little llm
| helpers. We all choose daily how our lives will look like from
| now on.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Indeed. This is something that isn't said a lot.
|
| A person who has been in an industry for 10+ years will be fine
| from exposure to LLM's. Because they already built the
| discipline. Frankly if you're an expert I don't see where the
| value of an LLM fits.
|
| People keep talking about productivity increases. But that just
| speaks to the quantity. What about the quality?
|
| It's tiresome to see people who just don't get this.
| prisenco wrote:
| Not to mention lacking the requisite knowledge whether the
| information is legitimate or not.
|
| I stay slightly above my knowledge. I can ask it about
| concurrency patterns in Go because I can spot the bs.
|
| But quantum physics or molecular biology? It could tell me
| anything that "sounds" reasonable but is completely wrong and
| I wouldn't know.
| emil-lp wrote:
| > "The updates made in no way impact or affect the substantive
| content, findings and recommendations in the report," it stated
| in the amended version.
|
| Well, then ...
| breakingcups wrote:
| It then continued: "I'm sorry, but as an AI language model..."
| windex wrote:
| The number of people managing people managing people who actually
| do the work is quite high in some of these firms. The partners
| are rolling in cash, while the actual consultants are hoping to
| climb the ladder. In some geographies, this has created cliques
| that keep each other in positions and they make money together
| while strangling any up and coming competition from below.
| sigwinch wrote:
| In theory, an official with skin in the game can use a consultant
| to learn how to avoid mistakes. We don't have AI smart-enough to
| speak about new kinds of mistakes (yet). So it seems to me that
| the public official should be using AI more than the consultant,
| for now:
|
| - Find prior consulting products (reports) relevant to my
| situation. Maybe Deloitte produced a great piece of public advice
| back in 2007 and AI can style-transfer it to my set of 2025
| vocabulary and assumptions.
|
| - What would an average citizen, with access to AI, expect me to
| do on their behalf and communicate back?
|
| - I meet with a consultant and provide AI with a transcript. It
| should research a reading list for us.
| ultim8k wrote:
| Most of the time gov, orgs and companies don't listen to their
| in-house engineers but will pay $$$ to some consulting firm, only
| to confirm the same thing or just to show that "they are taking
| actions towards the solution".
|
| In some cases there is distrust from management on in-house
| employees or in some other cases they want to show quick results
| without distracting their teams from their planned tasks.
|
| Of course there are the cases that managers have personal
| motives, either to add an extra (useless) achievement on their
| list or even worse to get referral fee or presents from the
| external consultancy.
| sigwinch wrote:
| That's a kind of due diligence theater. In particular, managers
| want to know what _their competitors'_ engineers would
| recommend, which is the best static advice consultants say they
| can give.
| cpa wrote:
| The people working inside the company may be both judge and
| party to the issue, it's not always a bad idea to call in
| consultants. Do you prefer independent and somewhat misinformed
| or stakeholder to the issue and knowledgeable?
| anal_reactor wrote:
| What if your in-house engineers are morons but you need to have
| one particular project done correctly. I don't understand the
| glorification of normal engineers - quite often they're normal
| people drawn from normal distribution, with all consequences of
| that.
| yard2010 wrote:
| This is my experience as well. One of my clients tasked me
| with stuff their average engineers can't do due to many
| reasons, not only competency. They just had to have this one
| project working in time.
|
| Personally consultants are just another tool in the mid-hi
| management toolbox. Just as a workforce on a payroll, this
| can be used in a good clever way and this can spiral into a
| shit show real quick.
| sgarland wrote:
| And I don't understand the glorification of consultancy firms
| like Deloitte. They're grossly overpaid MBAs, not deep
| experts in your niche field.
| Intermernet wrote:
| They appeal to legal protection and have little to do with
| actual correctness.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| > What if your in-house engineers are morons but you need to
| have one particular project done correctly.
|
| Then you sure as fuck don't want Deloitte within miles of it.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| You are missing the role that consultancy plays in diffusing
| responsibility for legal and performance problems.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Ah, but by outsourcing the consultancy to AI, the consultancy
| firms are playing the same game! Now we just need to train a
| perfectly bureaucratic LLM to provide iron-clad but
| completely vapid conclusions and citations, and we can
| finally fire all of those pesky public servants!
| PeterStuer wrote:
| If shit hits the fan, the director can pull the "we just
| followed Deloitte's advice" where "Bob from IT said so" just
| does not have the same responsability shielding.
| wmeredith wrote:
| It's called an accountability sink or liability sink.
| ekianjo wrote:
| There is a simple expression for that: decision laundering. You
| use a third party to convey credibility to a decision you have
| already taken internally. Even CEOs themselves say it in
| private.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Rich people helping out other rich people.
| zwnow wrote:
| Another win for AI! /s
| jack_riminton wrote:
| As someone who did an MBA and was groomed to be a Consultant and
| then repented (now a software engineer) you have to understand
| that the customer of a consultancy project is an exec.
|
| 1. The exec has been charged with exploring a new product space,
| a potential M&A deal, more vertical integration etc etc
|
| 2. The exec needs a gauge on the "size of the prize", is this
| thing worth doing? roughly how will it be done? how long etc.
|
| 3. The exec probably already has a rough idea or gut feeling
| about one such option
|
| 4. The consultants produce something that usually supports the
| gut feeling, other times it will suggest alternatives and provide
| some facts and figures to support
| jwx48 wrote:
| Bingo. Therein lies the difference between a "client" and a
| "customer".
| sigwinch wrote:
| Years ago, I was introduced to a "what would Elon do?"
| assistant. Execs want to know what their (current or
| hypothetical) competition would do given their decision-support
| data. But they also want to know what a consult-assistant
| cutout would know.
|
| (This was long before his political achievements)
| deaux wrote:
| This entirely depends on industry and geography. I've worked
| with big companies where the customers of consultants were
| effectively middle management, several layers removed from
| execs.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| True, they are called the "Hidden Client", any good
| consultant will be able to essentially do intelligence
| gathering on who that is and what they want, because it will
| be one exec
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMdZhIfPjs&list=PLtuDeBJEKi.
| ..
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Tell them what they want to hear with some light research. Now
| this sounds like an AI disruption waiting to happen
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Yeah but it's missing the credentials
|
| Hey this report was done by McKinsey and they hire from
| Harvard and Stanford, and hear how well they speak and look
| how soft their hair is, the report must be good!
| rimbo789 wrote:
| Are there any organizations on earth that, for their economic
| size, produce so little value to society than the Big 4?
| DrScientist wrote:
| While we are on the topic of listing problems with
| consultants/outsourcing - another potential problem is the A
| team/ B team switch.
|
| During initial engagement you are often talking to somebody who
| appears to actually know their stuff - you hire them and find
| that this knowledgable person has moved on to the next big sales,
| and you've got the B or C team.
| DrScientist wrote:
| To balance that with a positive comment - one of the reasons
| for going with a consultant/outsourcing is if you have a big
| one/off type project that you can't resource internally with
| perms.
|
| So the choice is trying to hire a bunch of individual
| contractors and forge them into a team, or hire a pre-built
| team for a period of time [1]
|
| [1] Sometimes it's sold as a re-built team - but in reality it
| might be hired in exactly the same way by the consultancy....
| Gigachad wrote:
| I just don't see how this happens for government work though.
| Surely they have enough year round work to hire people in
| house for it.
| codebje wrote:
| The Australian federal government goes through waves of
| "reducing the size of the public service" by firing and/or
| capping full-time hires, but the work's still there to be
| done so contractors get the gig.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| This is the thing. Its much less expensive to have these
| sorts of knowledge employees on government staff who just
| do this sort of work all the time, but governments prefer
| to spend more (much much more) on contractors. I suspect
| its partly because they are always wanting to announce
| down-sizing initiatives to appease the right, but I think
| more cynically, its because contractors will more
| reliably give them the 'right answer' than career civil
| servants and there's also the potential for kickbacks.
| Some of those profits paid to contractor companies might
| find their way back into campaign contributions.
| atmosx wrote:
| At the government level, it's mostly driven by ideology. I
| never came across a situation where a service improved
| after being "liberalized". Never. Not once. It is always
| end up in a combo of: poorer quality and (much) higher
| cost.
|
| I've seen too many cases where people suffer the
| consequences of their own ideas being implemented (large or
| lower scale), convinced that _if we just turn this knob a
| little more, it'll finally work._ Because of that, I don't
| spend much energy on them anymore.
| collingreen wrote:
| What does liberalized mean here? Also if you have time
| which ideology was holding the government/deloitte back
| here? I'm not sure what the message is here but I'm
| willing to with some more concrete.
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| In Canada the problem has mainly been that the government
| aren't allowed or willing to pay software engineers enough
| to compete with industry, but they are allowed to spend
| seemingly arbitrary amounts of money on services provided
| by external firms.
|
| To give an idea, we have a big scandal right now related to
| IBM and other contractors charging the Quebec government a
| lot of money for defective software for the car licensing
| and insurance website (SAAQClic). The final cost of the SAP
| based product was 1.1B CAD$. Meanwhile, they hired a new
| head of digital services at SAAQ, a job that would involve
| potentially dealing with future fallout from that fiasco,
| in addition to new projects etc. The posted salary range
| was 140k - 180k CAD$. I know many engineers in Quebec
| working on eg standard web applications etc making more
| money than that! They aren't leading 1B$ product
| development!
| ceridwyn wrote:
| That's okay though because the company will then hire
| subcontractors in Quebec through an agency. So instead of
| Canada paying 150k for a dev with experience, they pay a
| firm 200k to pay an agency 100k to give a junior dev in
| Montreal 50k for the work.
| hopelite wrote:
| Usually it's not the amount of work, it's whether that work
| is necessary at all and a question of quality because the
| interests are largely aligned when they should be in
| tension and some opposition. Bad things happen when the
| interests of all parties are in one direction, usually due
| to a lack of real consequences.
|
| In government you have to remember that it's people playing
| with other people's money, thinking all along that it's
| their money, i.e., a sense of entitlement. So you end up
| with many of the same kinds and types of deep problems that
| you see in things like investment frauds, trust fund
| babies, spoiled children, and drug addicts. It's probably
| not a coincidence that those often heavily overlap,
| including among bureaucrats and people dependent of
| government money.
|
| We are talking about a militating of resources and from
| that comes a whole cascading effect, e.g., the children of
| someone who has actually produced something well through
| the effective and productive allocation of resources,
| resource maxing, so to say; will produce far better progeny
| than someone whose efforts have never led to anything
| productive as a bureaucrat that simply brushes one billion
| dollar failure after another under the rug while coping
| with ever more vociferously proclamations of how important
| and good of a job he does.
|
| A good case in point is how America is $38 trillion in
| realized national debt, all while the "boomer generation"
| is at the same time declaring how wonderful things are,
| regardless of the political party. Those two things cannot
| be reconciled and will not perdure.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Government literally cannot pay for high level tech talent.
| I've been working on a very large cloud migration for a
| state government. I've actually been really impressed with
| their core technical teams relative to large enterprise
| teams I've worked with. I was actually tempted to look at
| what the state pays their employees knowing it would be a
| decent pay cut. The top level CTO type person for the state
| that has ultimate responsibility for all the technical
| stuff makes 70% of what I do as a consultant working for
| the state.
|
| This really becomes a problem when you have individual
| agencies making decisions on contracting resources even
| though they don't have anyone qualified to vet the
| resources they are bringing in. If each agency had a decent
| to good lead architect around the $200k range they could
| save _so much_ money on less than necessary contracts and
| cloud development "deals". But that pay band tops out
| around $140k.
|
| The _only_ folks making good money at the state government
| level are sports coaches and medical directors. The pay for
| public employees is public so it's easy to confirm.
| rcxdude wrote:
| When I did engineering consultancy, the team was usually
| thrown together from whoever was available. Usually they knew
| each other at least a little but it wasn't exactly the same
| team on each project. But yeah, the team involved in the sale
| and the team involved in the execution often had very little
| overlap (though, sometimes it was the B-team selling
| something unachievable to the customer and then handing it
| over to the A-team, which has more or less the same effect as
| far as the client's concerned. The swapping isn't necessarily
| a deliberate act of subterfuge but more a consequence of how
| people's time was managed: clients would generally take some
| time to actually commit and it's not feasible to keep a team
| on standby for every sales lead).
| pards wrote:
| > clients would generally take some time to actually commit
| and it's not feasible to keep a team on standby for every
| sales lead
|
| This is an important reality in consulting. The consultancy
| cannot keep their best people sitting idle while the
| clients spend months completing the paperwork.
|
| And it's not just a billability issue. The A team people
| don't like being underutilized and will find seek
| employment if they're kept idle too long.
|
| That said, savvy clients will include "named key resources"
| in the contract to ensure continuity between the sales team
| and the project team.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Most consultancies will push back very hard on having
| named resources in contracts. It's gives the contractors
| too much leverage over the company. From what I have seen
| it can work out quite well for the client and consultants
| though.
| trollbridge wrote:
| I've never understood the "can't resource internally with
| perms" argument. Hire people to do the job, and then lay them
| off when the project is over. These projects often last for
| years and frequently go over budget.
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| Layoffs have a significant morale impact for the rest of
| the company that lasts months or even years afterwards. You
| should not hire FTEs you intend to fire.
| DrScientist wrote:
| How difficult expensive that is depends on the country you
| are in - not all countries have a fire-at-will type legal
| system.
|
| Also having frequent rounds of firings impacts company
| culture - making it much more transactional ( everyone for
| themselves ) - some companies value their employees and
| culture and the collaboration and long term thinking that
| can bring.
|
| One option that's increasingly common is hiring people on
| fix term contracts - however that does create a sort of
| divide.
| decimalenough wrote:
| From my experience with using a $WITCH for a large support
| engagement, the A team woos you, the B team is what you get
| initially, and as soon as they think you've got your eye off
| the ball, they swap in the Z team.
|
| This was for a contract where we made it very clear that
| quality/skill was paramount and we would happily _pay above
| market rates forever_ if they could maintain it. Of course they
| got greedy and lost the deal entirely.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| That's exactly how it works.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| I've learnt this truth recently with most professions.
| Consultations with attorney based on rave reviews, after
| signing up, get assigned a random attorney from the firm.
| One attorney instantly sold my case to another attorney!
| Just started talking to chiropractor (i know! same as
| astrology), same trick!
|
| I haven't seen this yet in doctors offices. I see a doctor
| at an office specialized in an area (say gastrointestinal),
| they wouldn't switch and need the consent of the doctor to
| switch to another doctor in the same practice.
| dmd wrote:
| Chiropractor is NOT the same as astrology. Astrology
| isn't noted for causing permanent spinal cord damage and
| quadriplegia.
| tpoacher wrote:
| unless the stars lead you to a chiropractor
| dmd wrote:
| galaxy spine thinking
| trollbridge wrote:
| The quality of chiropractors varies so wildly that I
| would refuse to be treated by a new chiropractor that got
| bait-and-switched like that.
| coldpie wrote:
| Skip all the fluff and try being treated by a doctor
| instead! That's what they're there for.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Perhaps a pt
| jimnotgym wrote:
| In my experience, doctors will always treat a sore neck
| or back with pain killers or anti-inflammatories.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Did that work?
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| not the person you're responding to but it worked until
| they cut me off with no tapering plan, then I had back
| pain _and_ opioid withdrawal. hooray!
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| Chiropractic, as a field, was created by someone who was
| adamant that he got the idea from a ghost during a
| seance. He then claimed to cure someone's deafness via
| spinal manipulation.
|
| Just go to a massage therapist or a physical therapist
| (depending on your actual needs).
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| While I'm not a big fan of chiropractors there it's
| important context that few understand. In the US medical
| malpractice is deviation from the standard treatments,
| and the standard treatments are heavily influenced by
| insurance companies which creates a substantial
| misalignment of interests and often leads to very poor
| outcomes. Similar to how researchers should be paid to
| teach and not research because paying them to research
| pollutes the research with a misalignment of interests.
| With chiropractors their version of teaching is spinal
| readjustment, while they're paid for doing that they can
| explore other things. Obviously not the best way to
| organize society but it's an emergent behavior and a
| product of history. I did get my PRP treatment done by an
| enterprising chiropractor long before it became a
| standard of care, I had researched prolotherapy which was
| having great success in France for a long time but was
| unable to find a MD in the US that would do it for me. I
| had a serious injury that wouldn't heal for 8 years, 3
| months later it was gone.
|
| Take for example in Germany a huge percentage of doctors
| are into homeopathy and other alternative treatments. I
| think this is a byproduct of the germ vs terrain school
| of thought and the revolution of microscopes,
| antibiotics, and the fact that the Allies won WW2 meant
| that germ theory won and terrain theory largely was
| brushed aside. Though not all German doctors are willing
| to give it up yet. Terrain theory is not always wrong,
| Japan figured out that lack of B1 was killing a large
| number of their sailors and fixed that with diet.
|
| My focus is on genetics and dysautonomia, which if you do
| not have the statistical tools we have today will often
| look like subtle imbalances caused by environmental
| factors supporting the Terrain theory. A substantial
| percentage (~5%) of the population has some level of
| undiagnosed dysautonomia, probably due to an undiagnosed
| inherited genetic anxiety disorder. These are exasperated
| by environmental factors. There is an assumption that
| humans are generally healthy unless perturbed but for
| this subset of the population they really should be
| medicated and stay medicated. The problem is the lack of
| skill in systems engineering and statistics means doctors
| are usually unable to find the right medications (they
| tend to prefer stronger ligands and I think weaker
| ligands should be preferred) or the right dosing (I think
| patients should generally be in charge of their dosing
| and take medication based on how they feel once educated
| on how the feedback loops work).
|
| The fact that some subsection of medical science can know
| the right answers but medical science as an institution
| does not, it has evolved in the past and it will continue
| to evolve, should indicate that what is currently
| believed is not based entirely in scientific discovery
| but massively influenced by schools of thoughts,
| artifacts of history, fashions, and luminaries. Much like
| humanities, individuals can inhibit exploration of
| alternative ideas and science can't progress past them
| until they're out of the way.
| arethuza wrote:
| Or A subcontracts to B who subcontracts with C and A tries to
| keep all of this secret until team C end up being involved in
| a war...
| trollbridge wrote:
| Yep. War is one of those things where it doesn't matter how
| much subcontractor B is yelling at subcontractors C on the
| phone and telling them to lie about their names.
|
| I used to tell the prime contractor to just be honest. They
| couldn't even do that. Most of my business now comes from
| clients of A who have been burned badly and now physically
| meet the person who will actually be doing the work.
| dwattttt wrote:
| You have to keep a close leash on your contractors:
| https://www.loweringthebar.net/2019/10/fourth-level-
| subcontr...
|
| EDIT: I am _very_ sad that link rendering truncated "murder
| plot" from that
| icedchai wrote:
| My friend is working with a $WITCH (from the customer side,
| not $WITCH side) and quality / skill is nowhere to be found.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| But why would you go a WITCH company if skill was paramount
| and you were ready to pay above market rate? You may come
| into a McDonalds and ask for the best coffee they have and be
| able to pay above market rate, but they wouldn't be able to
| help you even if they wanted because that's not their
| specialization.
| jeltz wrote:
| But what is their specialization? Because as far as I know
| they do a McDonald's quality job but charge wat more than a
| McDonald's rate.
|
| The only use I have is so that cowardly executives can do
| what they already had planned to do but now can point to a
| bunch of paper that nobody will actually read in detail.
| pram wrote:
| No joke: I worked at an MSP and we onboarded a huge client,
| we were supposed to handle their network
| provisioning/problems through a dedicated service desk
| ticketing system.
|
| After the B team set everything up, they didn't even get the
| Z team. A few months in, it turned out NO ONE was logging
| into their ticketing system at all, so there were hundreds of
| tickets their engineers had created with no acknowledgement.
| Just lol.
| belter wrote:
| I have heard this before, but my experience when working as
| Consultant, is that Customers will do a lot of diligence before
| accepting a substitute. Maybe these are Contractors and not
| Consultants? ;-)
| DrScientist wrote:
| The above is really aimed at large consultancy firms,
| implementing large projects.
|
| If it's a small firm or a 1 person contract then sure.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's the whole game. Meet the partner, get the juniors, pay
| for the partner. And if you're really unlucky you can spend
| your time educating the juniors.
| harperlee wrote:
| Less cynically: there is only one partner; the team, if it
| works, manages to leverage the partner to ~5x - 10x.
|
| And no, you don't pay partner rates. The client generally
| knows that to do commercial pressure you need to get info
| about team size, put it in the contract, and then negotiate
| on blended rate so it is close to what the market pays for
| the junior.
| jeena wrote:
| Normally you just have a few team A people and they are needed
| for the next client.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Especially when the teams are bigger, you have some A person
| who works with 100 teams who pops in when you are really fed up
| to calm you and who is 'definitely on top of your project' and
| the rest are all juniors (and now less juniors with AI). One of
| my clients paid 500k for a project and asked us to vet the
| quality; they believed they were paying 15 people for the past
| months; when we went on zoom to talk to the team, after many
| camera/connection issues, we got the 15 people. So we asked to
| interview them all. Only one of them knew technical details
| about the project, the rest did not. The one guy that does know
| is the tech lead my client originally hired and seems he works
| part time on the project, or at least reads the tasks. Looking
| at the vast amounts of (bad) code, our suspicion is that there
| are 5 or so people using codex/claude code to paste in the
| tasks, wait for the code, go to some 'fake QA process' and then
| commit and deploy. This happened before AI definitely, but
| probably then it would be actually 15 people hammering code,
| but juniors instead of the seniors you are paying for.
| anonymars wrote:
| This one aged well
|
| https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2000-01-01
| recursive wrote:
| The url looked like it has a default date or sentinel value.
| But it seems that was actually published the morning of Y2K.
| incomingpain wrote:
| When I worked for an MSP this happened so much. I was booked
| 4-6 weeks out. But an emergency got me deployed asap.
|
| I'd get them up and running and then put together a plan to fix
| them up, but then some junior got assigned that job. The client
| then gets mad at me for not helping them anymore.
| DrScientist wrote:
| In the UK there is a bit of a problem with a revolving door
| between government and the big consultancy firms.
|
| The most egregious example of this is where the big accountancy
| firms offer political parties help in formulating tax policy and
| once it's enacted then go around charging companies for their
| expertise on how to comply/avoid the new rules.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Not unrelated, but the Albanese govt spending way too much on
| consultants.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/06/deloi...
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-vowed-to-crack...
| HelloUsername wrote:
| > https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/2025/oct/06/deloi...
|
| Why did you include the same article that you're posting on?
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| The Albanese government is the sitting federal government of
| Australia, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of the Labor
| Party.
| alexdoesstuff wrote:
| This is primarily a story of a failure to supervise the creation
| of the report, rather than anything related to AI.
|
| The role of the outsourced consultancy in such a project is to
| make sure the findings withstand public scrutiny. They clearly
| failed on this. It's quite shocking that the only consequence is
| a partial refund rather than a review of any current and future
| engagements with the consultancy due to poor performance.
|
| There shouldn't be a meaningful difference if the error in the
| report is minor or consequential for the finding, or if it is
| introduced by poorly used AI or a caffeinated up consultant in a
| late-night session.
| JCM9 wrote:
| CEOs keep taking (mostly misguided) about how GenAI will replace
| their people. The thing they miss, and this highlights, is that
| customers will also expect to pay far less for GenAI produced
| workloads, which likely more than eliminates any cost savings.
|
| Congrats clueless CEO... you're now selling a worse product at
| lower margins. Success!
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Relatedly, I think that success in post-AI business will be
| about doing more with the same or more people, not the same
| with less. Like you say, the AI part reduces the value and
| increases the availability of anything automated, so competing
| by trying to fire the most people to do keep doing the same job
| is simply not the game of anyone wanting their business to
| survive.
|
| You have to provide scale and quality that was out of reach
| before and is now table stakes (whenever now is for a given
| industry).
| trollbridge wrote:
| This particular report concerned paying benefits (or not paying
| them) to unemployed people trying to find work - in other
| words, the very people who allegedly will be losing their jobs
| to AI.
| favflam wrote:
| Just to add to this, customers are paying for a human to take
| responsibility for getting a job done. An amorphous "AI" cannot
| take responsibility and therefore does not merit the funds
| being spent on things like this report.
| Hoasi wrote:
| "We can drive the value of a service towards zero and create
| additional value at the same time," was the thinking here.
| figassis wrote:
| I think you mean "We can drive the cost of a service towards
| zero and create additional value at the same time," was the
| thinking here.
|
| Don't think they realized they'd also be driving the value to
| zero.
| Hoasi wrote:
| Exactly what I meant indeed. They probably thought how nice
| and how much cost-savings they were gonna get.
| Hoasi wrote:
| But they did ironically also drive the value they offered
| towards zero in this case -\\_(tsu)_/-
| guywithahat wrote:
| > CEOs keep taking (mostly misguided) about how GenAI will
| replace their people. The thing they miss, and this highlights,
| is that customers will also expect to pay far less for GenAI
| produced workloads, which likely more than eliminates any cost
| savings
|
| Is this bad? This seems good. The end goal being once it's
| cheaper, you can do more revenue. Also while I obviously don't
| stand by this Deloitte scandal when done right GenAI work _is_
| better
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| "GenAI done right" comes across like the famously elusive
| "agile done properly" and "safe C". If everyone is holding it
| wrong, are they?
| guywithahat wrote:
| Most implementations of GenAI are done correctly from what
| I've seen. A huge amount of production code is written by
| AI, and I use it every day because it's fast and
| significantly improves my productivity.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Fast and productive is very different than _good_. I 'd
| probably agree with a description of AI code as the fast
| food of code, but I certainly wouldn't call Taco Bell
| "better" if the wedding caterer showed up with it.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I think you're looking for lexical gaps where there are
| none. If you're not using LLM's while coding, you're
| behind the industry. While GenAI may be overhyped, it's
| not a fad, and if you don't incorporate it into your
| (what I assume is a) software based job you're going to
| fall behind your coworkers. I can't list every positive
| adjective here but it's an incredibly useful tool which
| everyone should be using.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I've been a consultant for most of the last 20 (actually come to
| think of it, 25) years. Even did a brief stint at Deloitte.
|
| There is a lot of prejudice against consulting. Places like
| Deloitte, Accenture, are some of the largest companies in the
| world, so when they fuck up (which they seem previously designed
| to do, Deloitte was the quest job I've ever had), they fuck up
| big and very visibly.
|
| But there is a super long tail of consultancies that are
| basically mom-and-pop businesses offering expertise that other
| small and medium sized businesses can't afford to keep on staff
| 100% of the time. It's not just management consulting, there is a
| lot of consulting for execution in a wide variety of areas. We do
| our jobs and go away quietly and someone else gets to take the
| credit. That's pretty much the nature of consulting.
|
| So you never hear about it. You just get the sound bites about
| McKinsey or whoever charging millions to tell NYC "use garbage
| cans".
| ctippett wrote:
| Funnily enough, in Australia a lot of those "mum and pop"
| consultancies (the successful ones at least) are getting
| slurped up by the likes of Cognizant and co.
| heisenbit wrote:
| This may be more related to buying contacts than buying
| expertise.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Yeah, because there's no IP, the MBAs don't see any
| "company" to buy. As a small consultancy owner, you're
| basically hoping you can sell the contracts when you're
| ready to retire.
| trollbridge wrote:
| For a bit of background, this report concerned a problematic IT
| system that was incorrectly sending life-ruining fines to people
| for not meeting their requirements to apply for so many jobs,
| accept jobs, etc. whilst on government assistance. The fines came
| in the form of a judgment debt so people would literally have a
| debt bailiff show up and start carting their property away. Due
| to a seriously flawed IT system, this even happened to people who
| weren't on any government benefits at all.
|
| So, a report gets commissioned that a company like Deloitte gets
| paid $440k for, and then they cheat and use AI to generate it,
| complete with more errors. Imagine what would happen if they
| retained Deloitte next to build the system. I foresee another
| repeat of the Fujitsu Royal Mail scandal.
| gdulli wrote:
| You don't have to imagine: https://cybernews.com/news/rhode-
| island-deloitte-data-breach...
| chris_wot wrote:
| Why bother with going through Deloitte? Just go straight to
| OpenAI.
| recursive wrote:
| Dear OpenAI: Whose door should I break down today? There's no
| need to explain the reason, just give me the address.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Sincerely, ICE
| lostlogin wrote:
| When humans want a scapegoat, the target is often chosen
| based on race.
|
| What will AI pick on?
| noboostforyou wrote:
| Sins of the father...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-
| musk-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38480953/
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| What the racists tell it to pick. Machines don't do
| anything humans don't tell them to do.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I really do think that this type of AI use is going to become a
| true life/death epidemic.
|
| The people at Deloitte are not generally dumb unmotivated
| people. They are ruthless $$ chasers and if AI is allowed they
| will use it to check the boxes and move onto the next paycheck.
|
| Many of these people will effectively have their life ruined.
| Many will likely take their own life. Its not just harmless
| paperwork fudging when it results in men with guns being
| dispatched.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| > The people at Deloitte are not generally dumb unmotivated
| people.
|
| Citation needed. I don't deny that they're motivated, but in
| my experience, those that can't do, teach, and those that
| can't teach, consult.
| hooverd wrote:
| what's that anecdote about the stupid and industrious?
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I wouldn't say they are all "smart." Of the random
| employees from there I've had to deal with. I would not
| call any of them dumb is all maybe I've been lucky?
| jmorenoamor wrote:
| I need that in a tshirt, or a mug, or a billboard.
| mgh2 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/0fi0K
|
| Source: tons of references at end
| https://medium.com/@trendguardian/why-we-are-
| dispensable-7a5...
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I'm not a fan of "consultants" at all. In my experinance
| all they ever do is either muck things up by black boxing
| the thing they were paid to do. Or more often simply
| leave a huge list of "you should do this" that will be
| $500k, and then leave.
|
| What I've heard as a counter to their uselessness is that
| they function as a sort of legal corporate espionage. You
| should do this because my other customer that I cant name
| but I'll just call Mr.Faang is also doing that.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| You missed their primary purpose: To provide cover for
| whatever half-assed idea an exec came up with. If the CEO
| of my automobile company wakes up one morning with the
| zany idea to cut costs by only including 3 wheels with
| the purchase of a car, if he just goes ahead and does it,
| the investors will call for his head when customers stop
| buying our cars and instead purchase our four-wheeled
| compeitors. But if our CEO hires Deloitte, they'll make a
| bunch of reports and excel sheets that show why 3 wheels
| are the best idea ever. If he wanted to add an extra
| wheel, there'd be a bunch of reports on the superiority
| of 5 tires. If he decides to switch back, hire the
| consultants, they'll dutifully report on how 4 tires was
| the right amount all along. It's all just an
| accountability shell game.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > The people at Deloitte are not generally dumb unmotivated
| people
|
| Dumb and highly motivated, then?
| riffraff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they're very motivated to make money.
| rainonmoon wrote:
| It already is a life/death epidemic. An extremely similar
| automated decision making scandal to the one OP is referring
| to led to people's deaths:
| https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/2030-people-
| hav....
| saltyoldman wrote:
| It's the problem in the first place - they probably DID use
| Deloitte to build the original system.
| SamLeBarbare wrote:
| Mix-up in title... it's not the Australian gov. Albanian mix-up,
| again, "arreter de vous trump'er svp"
| Macha wrote:
| Anthony _Albanese_ is the name of the current PM of Australia
| thisisit wrote:
| Just today a consulting firm asked if they can use AI to generate
| user guides and documentation.
|
| I refused because of the hallucination issues. But got overruled
| by the end users - who are going to use these documents. They are
| convinced that AI will move things faster. When it comes time to
| using the document they are most likely going to feed the doc to
| AI and ask for summary and steps.
|
| Write document using AI and then read/summarize using AI.
| paxys wrote:
| Knowing how these IT consulting firms work the AI-generated
| report was probably better quality that what they would have
| otherwise delivered.
| sidcool wrote:
| I have worked in Consultancies for a long time. And many people
| here don't know what they do. Of course, there are bad apples
| that cheat. But a lot of good value in consultancies too! One
| evidence is that they are still around and earn billions.
| u_sama wrote:
| I am legitimately curious what is the day to day work, and what
| is the consumer itch they itch for the companies.
|
| Could you develop on your experiences and what is the missing
| POV that makes so many HNers be against consultancies?
| iamleppert wrote:
| I work in a building where Deloitte has an office. I see their
| employees riding the elevator and sometimes in other common
| areas. I just same here to say they are some of the most
| depressed and down-trodden group of people I have ever seen. They
| are noticeably different than other employees in the building.
|
| What's wrong with working at Deloitte that is does this to
| people?
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I think all the major public accounting firms are like that.
| Super hierarchical, dreary work, very corporate attitude.
| Everyone is there exclusively to hopefully climb to the top of
| the crab bucket. Imagine all the worst aspects of a FAANG
| company, but also all the peons are making a fraction of their
| tech compatriots.
| boramalper wrote:
| _Deloitte named a Leader in Worldwide Artificial Intelligence
| Services by IDC MarketScape_
|
| https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/about/recognition/analyst...
| para_parolu wrote:
| I have such a bad experience with Deloitte when calculating my
| tax return. Almost like some lazy joke about capitalism. It's a
| very dysfunctional company.
|
| They were calculating taxes in year when I moved from Europe to
| US and assigned two people, one for each country. For a month
| they were not able to make proper adjustments, until I realized
| they can't talk to each other. One day I just started conference
| call from my phone to introduce them to each other and make sure
| they at least can talk. Nevertheless, in the end they made
| mistakes that cost me $5000. Luckily I was able to fix it with
| IRS two tears after
| janalsncm wrote:
| I imagine that we will look back fondly on these days, when AI
| still is easy to spot because it hallucinates references. A non-
| existent reference is a slam dunk against an argument, but also
| technically easier to avoid. They will likely be much less common
| in the future.
|
| It's much harder to counter the reasoning word salad that LLMs
| sometimes produce, where A doesn't really connect to B but the
| text insists it does.
| chanux wrote:
| I have seen this reported widely, discussed in a few forums.
|
| This will also do nothing to this company.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Long term reputation is everything for these companies.
| Eventually their regulatory capture isn't strong enough if
| their purchases would lose reputation by buying Deloitte.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Government need to have their own expertise. Specially in the
| anglo world, it seems governments are obsessed with not doing
| anything at all and are staffed mostly by a few admin staff. No
| innovation without 5 million $ to some lazy as outside consulting
| company.
| apwell23 wrote:
| why was the Albanese changed from the title?
| Huppie wrote:
| Because it's confusing most likely. As others have pointed out:
|
| > Anthony _Albanese_ is the name of the current PM of Australia
|
| Which is probably why this Australian publication calls it the
| 'Albanese Government'. Not to be confused with the government
| of Albania.
| sema4hacker wrote:
| Sounds like there will be a market for an AI tool that proofreads
| AI-generated documents. Or will that even be possible?
| linhns wrote:
| With the quality of work Deloitte has been churning out recently,
| AI or humans do not matter anymore.
| PieTime wrote:
| Management consult grift is reaching its inevitable end. They'll
| cut out the management and insert AI consultants.
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