McKinsey / Bain NYC vs. Evercore Menlo / Lazard SF FT

Not the above commenter, but I’d actually rank

McKinsey > Evercore / Centerview > BCG / Bain / Lazard

If McKinsey was any other office, I’d rank Evercore / Centerview higher, but McKinsey NY is insanely good

Happy to reply here and discuss in more personal detail over a phone call. 
 

1 - Rationale for the Move: Found the people and coverage at my bank pretty uninspiring and meh. Folks are smart at these places, but generalizing widely, not very social and kind of cold / not fun. While folks were not abusive / outwardly rude, there was a lot of politicking and personal relationships were non-existent. Additionally, our bullpen / floor was absolutely silent and we never did any social events / anything of the like. Moreover, I found the work pretty boring and mundane. While I certainly learned a bit about transaction processes and some nitty gritty finance technicals / modeling things, I honestly found ~5% of the hours actually additive / interesting and it just seemed an inefficient and somewhat painful use of time as there are often fire drills, cancelled plans, and late nights / weekend work. Particularly  at Evercore and Lazard, the interview process is super technical and between that, my summer analyst stint, and a bunch of finance internships in college / undergrad coursework I knew most of the basics that someone from a non-finance background might find super additive in the first 6 months of banking. I also often found a lot of the work pretty thoughtless / pointless, particularly on long-term coverage accounts where our ideas were literally useless and not actionable or realistic but you’d spend an inordinate amount of time putting together and turning pages. I’d say last piece of the move was something that I evolved my thinking on - at the time, I found the overall hours extremely painful and the nature , but have come around on this as my take is if I want to end up in a great sit when you’re 40 or 50 (Consulting Partner, PE Partner, C-suite or senior at a consumer / retail company for me), you need to grind in your 20s. Candidly, embracing this fact instead of trying to fight the hours helps a lot and is something I internalized while still in banking. 
 

2 - Long Term Goals: as of now, planning to move to UMM / MF consumer PE after 2-3 years at my consulting firm. I absolutely love my job / firm, but miss the actual finance parts of finance and the level of ownership / exposure you get in an investing seat (did some investing internships in college that showed me this). Am also much more comfortable as stated above in my ability to happily handle the additional hours / stress of PE vs. my current gig. Would say that I’d also be 100% happy to continue on at my consulting firm and get business school sponsored / return if I’m not able to land an offer at a PE firm that I’m happy with. I have a fantastic life and this move is more about “is there something that’s even better” vs “I hate my job and need to get out”. If I stay in consulting beyond the “analyst” level, I’d probably want to get as senior in consulting as possible before jumping into an operator role in consumer / retail.

3 - Thoughts on the Move. Frankly. I couldn’t be happier. I love my firm and the job. Having spent ~6 months thus far in our due diligence ring fence, I feel great about being able to put the CDD skillset together with my finance background in the PE associate role. More than anything, consulting teaches you how to bread down ambiguous problems into actionable workstreams and get to a pretty good answer while being 80/20 and keeping the hours fairly sustainable. Consulting also helps you build a skillset around building a meaningful relationship with your client map, presenting to internal and external stakeholders and generally just things that make you a better, more confident business professional. More importantly, the culture and people at my firm are awesome. We have regular social events, the office is filled with chatter / laughter and pretty fun, and I truly feel mentored and even cared about at a personal level. I meet with my supervisor and manage regularly and they dedicate time to helping me improve my professional development needs. More importantly, I’ve had very senior mentors who give me advice thats in my best interest even if worse off for the firm, working team members happily cover for each other in emergencies, celebrate each other birthdays / major life events; and an “analyst” class that is full of talented, social people who are friends. I’d say ~95% of the people at my firm I’d love to be friends with and thing are genuinely really great humans. 

Realize this was quite long, but hope this is helpful. Would note that banking people / culture / hours can vary meaningfully group to group and firm to firm. Also, would say that culture / hours / people and overall experience can be pretty different at McKinsey vs Bain (with McKinsey people and culture being a bit closer to banking on average), so would due some firm and group specific diligence in your situation