Office Decision, does it matter?

Just a quick question, I know in IB there is a significant difference in quality of experience depending on location, is the same true for consulting, or does it not matter as much? Thanks for the help

 

Hi - assuming you understand the reason why location is important in IB, you should be able to apply the same logic to consulting to figure out the answer.

For example - let's take Goldman's NatRes team in the NY office vs the Salt Lake City office. There is a large difference in experience because:

  1. Senior coverage bankers for the NatRes team (chemicals, midstream, power, energy) sit between the Houston and the NY office...not in the Salt Lake City office. Therefore, the majority of the work gets done in the NY and HOU offices.

So ask yourself this...will you be getting senior exposure at the office you chose?

  1. Talent. New York, SF, LA, Houston are all hubs for banking for their own industries (with NY being the HQ) are attractive top teir talent. Same cannot be said for sell-side offices in Dallas, Salt Lake City or any of the other 2nd tier cities.

So ask yourself this...what type of talent does the office you are targeting attract? What type of peers will you have?

Just my 2c. I am a student but I had IB offers from 2 major banking hubs and this was part of my thought process. I try not to comment much on here since I don't believe I can contribute better info than some of the certified users but I hope this was of some value.

 
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To put it simply - it depends on your firm. On the whole, there are no meaningful differences in reputation or quality of experience between offices, certainly not to the degree observed in IB.

However, there may be differences in project mix between offices, wholly dependent on your firm's staffing model. Firms with more local staffing models e.g. Bain will provide you with more office or region-specific opportunities, so if you're staffed in New York, you have a much higher probability of being staffed on finance projects. As such, your exits may be molded accordingly. That might sway the decision calculus in favor of one office vs. another.

Other differences play into your experience as well, such as office size. I'd implore you to speak with people from different offices for a more holistic picture.

 

Thanks for the input, so it seems like it depends more on the staffing model in consulting? Interesting. So if the company I accepted an offer with has a "regional" model does that mean it doesn't really matter because people within the same region tend to work with each other on projects regardless?

 

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