Sometime around the winter of 2012, or maybe a little bit before, I really wanted to be an organizational Development consultant. It is almost 12 years later now, and I’ve never done this. In fact, currently I generate most of my paltry income from writing here and from bartending. So no, I never ended up in the random downtown Houston corporate board room telling people what to do. But I made some steps in that direction in general, most of which ended up being wrong, when I went to a grad program at University of Minnesota in OrgDev (most of the jobs coming out were HR-based). It may have been among the worst decisions of my adulthood, all-in. Anyway, that’s just some backstory.
Good, funny report from Last Week Tonight here on McKinsey:
I do think most people who think about the business world critically understand that McKinsey is kind of a giant shell game. It takes seemingly-elite minds in their 20s and says, “Your career will be minted if you’re willing to fly to Denver a lot and tell company leaders very basic things that harm the employee class and benefit the owner class.” That’s the basic rub on McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc. In recent years, it’s gotten a little bit darker once we learned more about McKinsey and Saudi Arabia, or McKinsey and Purdue Pharma.
I did my immediate post-college “I think I am elite, although adulthood will cement the opposite!” deal with Teach for America, where you go into inner-city schools and teach. It's also a pathway to law school and prestigious white-collar careers for most, but it’s less drastic than McKinsey, because maybe 1 in every 12 TFA teachers end up sticking around education and becoming a principal, etc.
When I watched the above YouTube, I tried to think of all the consultants I know. I got to about 12 people.
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