Can Consulting Be as Technical as IB?
New here, and debating between IB and consulting, but was curious whether consulting can be a technical career. I like the problem-solving aspect of the field, but I'm also a little more technically oriented and I've heard that consulting isn't a very technical career path so wanted to get some opinions from here. I know there are different types of consulting, so if anyone has opinions on a specific type that'd be really appreciated.
Also, what about comp? Are there situations where it's comparable to IB?
Bump
No
Gonna go against the grain here and say that in certain situations yeah consulting can be "more" technical. I moved from industry to mgmt consulting so can obviously speak the best to it, but know a little about the rest as well.
Management / strategy consulting: Not very technical at all. You won’t be doing the kind of detailed financial modeling you’d see in IB or PE, and you’re certainly not writing code, but there r some analytical things obviously (not like you won't ever touch excel etc). Market sizing, pricing elasticity exercises, segmentation analysis, benchmarking, and building logical models of how a business works are all staples. In diligence work (especially commercial diligence), things become more numbers-driven: triangulating market size, pressure-testing management forecasts, understanding unit economics, and building models around adoption curves or cost drivers. It kind of makes sense when you think about it, you're moreso advising on decisions not numbers, and the numbers just help you make a decision. Comp is around $130-140K for consultants (MBB).
Other consulting: Varies wildly, and given how many different types there are, can't really speak to each individually. Tech consulting (cloud, data, architecture, cyber) can get very technical. You’re not writing production code as a consultant, but you might be designing systems, evaluating infrastructure, working with engineers, or translating technical tradeoffs for executives. Ops consulting can be technical in an industrial-engineering way: process modeling, throughput analysis, supply chain network design, inventory optimization, etc. Then you got stuff like HR consulting which are not at all technical. IMO people in these types of consulting are in in because of the love of the game, not so much astronomical comp.
Restructuring consulting: Everyone's favorite type of consulting these days for some reason, especially on WSO. I do have minimal experience with them bc the corporation I was at filed for chapter 11 (it was a mega bankruptcy), and a RX consultancy / CRO was hired. Based on what I saw, extremely technical work, more than the RX bankers who were also on the deal. They were neck-deep in liquidity modeling, 13-week cash flows, creditor analyses, business plan assessments, operational break-fix work, and forensic type financial deep dives. And, I saw a fair amount of traditional valuation work, mostly centering on sense checking the bankers' valuations. Easiest way to describe the work is a mix of turnaround PE, credit advisory, operational diagnostics, and traditional management consulting. Comp depends on the firm, places like A&M are uncapped so you can make a ridiculous amount that beats basically anything on the street if you work hard enough (aside from some HF roles), but in general, better than mgmt consulting pay and can beat / match IB at a fair amount of firms.
Speaking for the RX Co stuff, you hit most of it, to add on to the A&M RX stuff specifically, it's really not even that much work to hit insane comp, like 60 hours per week over a year is enough to get you close to $280k TC, which I can't think of many other careers that do that. That's typical of RX consulting firms that do a billable hour based comp method.
Billable hours are very different from total hours worked, especially in restructuring. I’m in the industry, and anecdotally, a “60 billable hour week” can translate to 70–80+ actual hours when you factor in internal calls, reviews, non-billable work, and tasks that don’t ultimately get passed through.
Additionally, tracking your time to the 10th of an hour when in bk means that every hour logged has to be denfensible and diligently logged. It’s certainly not as easy to bill 60 hours as it sounds
How did you go industry to consulting? Thought it was usually the other way around unless MBA.
In tech consulting. Absolutely hating it. Had no interest in developing skillsets that align more with business analysts / PMO projects (I have a hard time even calling this a skillset, it's just admin crap - working with engineers and making sure they hit their deadlines). Only took this job because I was searching for a job post MBA for 6+ months and this was the first legit offer I got.
Feels like the exact opposite of what I'm actually interested in which was strategy consulting. So hard to look for exits now with this misaligned experience.
The one thing that's nice about tech consulting is that it could easily be a 40-50 hour work week (sometimes far less) if you're good at delegating what needs to get done to the technical teams (engineers etc.). I can see why engagement managers hang around for that reason (~$200K to babysit engineers and be the middleman for the client deliverables).
Bro don’t bring that weak consulting sauce up in this forum. Take it to Consulting.Com. Consultants draw pretty little PPTs about value while I straight up create it…daily and tap dem GFs while they are traveling Mon-Thurs in Boise. Their models are weak and they don’t do bottles.
someone’s MD come get their analyst lol
Come get their analyst?!? I am saving peoples careers here.
Depends heavily on the type of consulting. As another person said, management and strat consulting are much more qualitative than quantitative / technical (they still do have technical parts but the focus is qualitativeness), econ, HR and other types of consulting are a mixed bag; econ being more quant and HR being more qualitative, and then RX consulting is pretty brutally technical / complex, and incorporates some management / strategy consulting aspects as well - it's why they get paid so well.
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