What are your least favorite parts of MBB consulting?
I fortunately received an offer from an MBB firm and am leaning towards signing there, but also interned in investment banking last summer, an elite boutique. I believe I would enjoy consulting work more, but just want to hear the downsides too. By working in IB I feel like it be a lot easier to pay off my student debt, but finance long term doesn't sound that interesting to me. Thanks for the help.
What really bothers me is the amount of time ineffectively used or entirely wasted throughout the week. You are constantly in settings that are less than ideal for getting work done, and this stretches your day out.
Just a half thought through list here: There's time spent in an Uber, going through airport security, waiting by the gate for delayed planes, idly sitting during takeoff/landing. There are the constant team dinners and outings; although great for team morale, they are a "kick the can down the road" solution for true happiness (i.e. when the deliverable is done). There are the process-y meetings (internal and with the client) that typically need to happen every week, often accompanied by some slides you make that will get ignored. There's the Fridays at the home office, where everyone is beginning to ramp down and internal firm, career mentorship, extra/pro-bono activity meetings block out half your day.
I think you get the point.
Important caveat to note that this is from the point of view of a Associate/AC/BA or a post-MBA entry-level and these struggles are not exclusive to consulting. I just think that compared to a banker, your time is wasted in a slightly different, unique way.
Thanks for the response. Seems like some of the similar problems in banking occur in consulting too but stem from different reasons.
You must have a pretty chilled EM to not work whilst sitting at the gate or in an Uber. That's prime "Pls Fix" time.
Lol fair point. Even when I am working in these situations, there is so much wasted time and I find that hunching over my screen in an Uber is less than ideal.
I have an "I don't work in cars" policy because it makes me feel car sick. If your teams can't accommodate some of these things that matter to your wellbeing, then you have bigger problems.
Yield loss: Be it due to client demands or over-zealous leadership participation, sometimes you end up doing work that either does not really add value or that will simply be ignored. You can try to push back a significant part of that, but every now and then you'll be in a situation where it happens. I don't know what's worse though, knowing it before hand and doing it anyway or not knowing and only realizing later.
Travel: Some projects with travel can be horrible. 3 hours plane ride and 2 hours by car on a Monday morning/ Thursday night plus ~2 hours daily drive from and to the hotel is okay for a couple weeks but will eventually wear you down. Some people like it more than others, though...
Staffing: Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Most people have at least one bad staffing story from their tenure. Navigating this well is probably one of the main differentiators between a good and a bad consulting experience.
Thanks for your insight!
I’m not a consultant but my least favorite part is that all consultants speak in list format lol
Now let me give you 3 reasons why that communication method is clearer...
Lol!
For me, by far the worst part is unjustified stress... Someone in the leadership in the promotion window, insecure partners, people who cannot value add anything on content or process, but can only push the team...Simply toxic people. All of the above create stressful and toxic environment from time to time what is the worst part of the job.
Can you elaborate on this? I'm reading it as "unnecessary busy work" handed down by inefficient people.
Well, as you probably know, consulting is full of insecure people, who care only about themselves and often treat subordinates purely as resource - leading them to do additional unnecessary work or putting to unlimited stress because of some internal meetings with leadership. That happens almost in every other project.
Can definitely relate, but interested to hear more...
Agreed. The stress is mostly unnecessary / internally inflicted in consulting. Clients don't give a damn about >50% of the bells and whistles partners / managers demand. So much for the 80:20 mantra consulting firms preach...
Main issues are:
Too much time wasted on fake team events: dinners, drinks, etc - when you work in consulting, the cohort is huge so 100 people at drinks every other Friday makes it just some corp event you just make small talk at without really bonding. In consulting attendance to these things matter a lot, so it's really just face time at work
Problem creation: Consultants claim to be good at problem solving, but anyone who has worked in consulting knows it's about problem creation - convincing the client they have a problem they need to fix, etc. At work this attitude carries over, and within teams each layer above tries desperately to add value / create "pls fix" work for the layer below without actually providing good insights / meaningful thoughts. I felt my time in IB was better spent with MDs having real value adding comments from their previous deal experience, knowledge of buyer habits, etc
Overrated "value add": Is the work really that interesting? Removing rose tinted glasses, consulting work is mostly reading existing data and interviewing people (primary / secondary research) - so you just collate all this data into slides. Not that glam really, and if the client had enough time / wanted to do it, they could do it much easier.. in IB some clients just don't have the technical capabilities / market understanding. Also, consulting partners tend to show up 24 hours before the presso, read the deck, and just present - this means you won't learn much from them vs a senior deal maker.
Insecurity: someone above said Consultants tend to be insecure and I agree, or at least find this much more common vs finance. A lot of Consultants are just beta males, petty, whiny, and sensitive. In addition, I find most just ignorant of world issues / markets - might just be because they don't need to be on top of things like in finance, but it sure makes lunches boring
Just curious - it sounds like you’ve done stints in both IB and consulting, and now (going by label) you’re in Corp dev. Was it consulting first or IB first before going to Corp Dev and why the switch? How are you finding Corp dev?
You're right - I did IB first then consulting before CD. IB offered a lot of learning but I wanted a risk-taking role so knew I'd end up in CD or PE in the Long run. I debated doing an MBA as an exit out of IB before PE / CD but was also pretty curious about consulting / felt I lacked "strategic / operational skills" - in the end I took the consulting offer instead knowing CD roles were less fussy about the MBA and I could satisfy my curiousity about consulting. So far CD has been the most enjoyable role for me. Are you considering a career switch?
Manager: Great analysis, but I don’t really like how you laid it out on the slide. Me: Okay what do you not like about it? Manager: I think we could just make it look better. Me: Okay what would you like me to change? Manager: ... Me: Alright I’ll work on it
Exactly mate - this was my point 2 above. Tons of comments / "pls fix"s with no damn tangible value add / direction in consulting.
In IB, at least an MD would say take off these buyers cause they don't have deal appetite, valuations could be higher because xxx or yyy. Of course there is some marketing intention built in, but the debates around the basis of these changes at least are somewhat intellectual vs baseless back and forth in consulting edits lol.
When someone I haven't worked with before asks me to "make it look pretty" my heart sinks because I know i'm going to go through multiple revisions before figuring out what their idea of pretty is
I'm also somewhat surprised to hear this since I actually get what you described a lot in Banking. Didn't expect consulting to have something so similar and in fact worse.
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