
McKinsey and Company: Capital’s Willing Executioners - smacktoward
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/02/mckinsey-company-capitals-willing-executioners
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cryoshon
excellent article about the flaws of mckinsey as an establishment. it's true
that their grift is inexcusable, amoral, and a burden to humanity -- but the
OP covered that. the biggest myth surrounding mckinsey is that they're
competent.

my favorite part about people from mckinsey has been that they're stunningly
incapable. need some quick research done? after a lot of hand-holding, you'll
be given an uninsightful and dubiously comprehensive summary of the mainstream
view on the topic of your choice and a pivot table you didn't want or need,
roughly 10 days after you needed it. you won't need to proofread the report,
of course. but that isn't what you cared about anyway.

need something obscure and complex deeply analyzed and fully understood in an
insightful way? again, you'll get some flashy combination of excel and
powerpoint shit you don't need or ask for, maybe even ahead of schedule, but
you'll also get an irrelevant speech about whatever tangentially topical
prestigious person/institution the mckinsey person recently bumped elbows
with. you'll also realize that the person working on the thing you wanted
doesn't really have any understanding of the thing you wanted them to
understand at all -- they're just regurgitating whatever they could find
without analysis.

however, they've all been imminently presentable people who can articulate
themselves clearly and appear to be very serious. this has been my experience
with no fewer than 4 former employees -- all of whom were hired to perform
tasks exactly like one would expect a business management consultant to be
capable of -- but take it with a grain of salt anyway.

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g_sch
I think the article makes a pretty persuasive case why competence isn't a core
selling point of McKinsey (or many other management consultancies) anyway.
What many companies want is for an external party to tell them to do what
they've already decided to do anyway, but would rather not take personal
accountability for. They're paying for the amorality - if the suggestion comes
from someone else, it's not _you_ being amoral, it's a consultancy with a
prestigious brand that everyone else listens to, even if this unspecified
"everyone else" is hiring McKinsey for the same reason you are: to defer blame
for doing something abhorrent.

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smacktoward
Yes, just so. Criticizing McKinsey-type outfits for being amoral misses the
point. For them, amorality _is the product._

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jshaqaw
I worked at McKinsey a while ago. I’m willing to bet this person was an
Analyst (the recent college grads). Analysts were most likely to believe the
firm’s marketing schpiel about how important they are in the world. In
reality, McKinsey just kinda puts out power point decks. People past a certain
level at McKinsey admitted that in quiet confidence.

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vsskanth
Excellent article, thanks for sharing.

I wonder, if one wants to disrupt management consulting, what would it be ?
Massive open annonymized datasets ?

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vanusa
This whole "management consulting" thing is but a symptom of a deeper,
underlying problem.

What really needs to be disrupted is the governing ideology of the political-
economic system itself.

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rayiner
I’m sitting here in Tokyo, in a now rich country that was a developing nation
when my dad was born, arguing on my magic pocket computer with someone who may
we be in the opposite side of the world. All thanks to the current “governing
ideology of the political-economic system.”

Making the case that needs to be “disrupted” is a tough road you’ve chosen to
hoe.

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vanusa
Yes, the gadgets are nifty and -- for the time being -- life is relatively
swell (for some).

But there are downsides, too -- and the long-term prognosis of what this
system holds in store for us... just doesn't look good. And may potentially
end quite disastrously, in fact.

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bhupy
Can you elaborate what the long-term prognosis is?

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vanusa
The inevitable outcome of a system predicated on infinite growth on a planet
with finite resources.

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tehjoker
Just a reminder that Mayor Pete is an alum of this organization.

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TurkishPoptart
I did not know that!

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euroPoor
who would have thought that capitalist realism wasn’t the antidote to all of
the world’s problems? certainly not thatcherite or reaganite policy building
ideologists!

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CharlesColeman
> capitalist realism

I've never heard this term before, but it's perfect. The implicit assumption
that certain capitalist economic theories _are literally the real world_
(rather than limited and imperfect models) is something I've been noticing
more and more, but never had a term for.

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mach5
highly recommend the book:
[https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%...](https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf)

