BCG >> Mck, Bain in comp?

The first and most obvious answer is that these are different roles in different industries. There's little reason for us to align our comp vs other industries. We do take them into account obviously, after all we're often competing for the same candidates, but we wouldn't align to them. We also pay less than Big Law firms, PE, or HF.

Now, to elaborate a bit more, I can think of at least 3 reasons:

• The entire premise of Consulting is to open doors for exits later, which we can price in to an extent. The idea is you join Consulting because you want to expand your possible set of exits (from PM to Corp Strat, to PE or VC, to startup, etc.). Thus, part of the value prop is the leverage you get from the brand name, which could be argued to be priced into our comp (i.e., you get a little less than some other options because it allows you to gain more later when you exit). Now if you 100% know you want to be a tech PM, then there's no reason to go to consulting in the first place, but not everyone knows that ahead of time.
• The most common goal once you make SM/EM/PL is to aim for Partner. It's still a ways away, but at this point you're part of the leadership team, and the selling point is now "Hey look, you're just 3-5 years away from being Partner". With that comes a few benefits: even better exits if you leave (SVP, C-suites, etc.) and sustainably pretty high comp over the long run if you stay (typically high 6 to low 7 figures). Are there other roles out there who make more / similar? Yes, but we can't align ourselves to the 2-3 industries who pay more than us. We're literally among the highest paid professions. Only a handful do better than us on average, so I wouldn't look at it as a "negative".
• Consulting is slightly less dependent on the business cycle than tech (and some other industries), meaning we experience less variance in the demand for our services (though we still go up and down a bit). Basic risk analysis tells you that if an outcome is more uncertain (say demand for your products), you have to pay someone more to compensate them for this added risk to their income (it's just a risk premium). Conversely, if things are more certain in your industry, you wouldn't need to compensate for that risk factor. Now of course we also suffer a bit during downturns, but our swings are few and far between. This time around, we suffered a bit more than usual because we all significantly over hired, so a correction was necessary in the short term, which was quite painful in some firms, I admit, but we don't have regular "massive layoffs" across the industry (and certainly not at MBB) every time the economy slows down or inflation goes up more than expected (at firm level; any one specific office may have to correct more due to local market conditions).

Now, to your point, this is also very much why so many consultants try to go to tech later, and recruit for PM roles when they can. It does pay more, you have RSUs, which can be worth a lot at the right companies, and WLB is typically better too.

Is all of the Snapchat money in cash?

anyway, just to keep in mind senior manager is not a senior role at all. These people are 5 years into a career, maybe 6. They’re what banks would call VPs. 

Yes, which I did mention in my post. Now if you want to be specific, for SMs, at target, that'd make it 340-440 and for APs that'd be 430-560, but this varies year over year (e.g., last couple of years it was 0)