It looks legit, but it isn’t included in the enterprise version we get access to. Would use a personal account but it’s not worth the risk as they monitor everything on the laptop
Hi, I posted on here a while back but here’s a summary of my background and issue.
I work at a mid/large size IT consulting company for 7 years.
I’ve gotten the highest performance grades and high project utilisation (over 98%) for the 7 years
My project is cutting costs and many are benched I know about 10 people who have been put on PIP and fired just this month. This is greater than the amount over the past 7 years I’ve been here.
I joined a new account this year and talked about in the last post that I sleep 4 hours average for this past year. I am taking on work much more senior than me and lack of sleep is impacting me work as I had issues troubleshooting and solving and even speaking/thinking. I’ve had other issues which I believe is caused by lack of sleep such as paranoia and anxiety.
My intention on the last post was to take a sabbatical out I was advised by comments that I should go to the GP and this is a normal thing to get a sick leave so I can return back to work and have workload reduced.
I’ve spoken to my GP but I’m afraid to take it further because I don’t want to be put on a PIP for taking sick leave or because my utilisation is low. All 10 people who were put on PIP were due to there benched periods.
I recently posted something similar, but now there is an update and I want to know what I should do. Quick background, when i started at my company years ago, i became friends with my manager and team member since it was a small team of 3 people. My manager was patient and supportive with me but over time has grown to be a bully. Especially when there is down time and I am doing other tasks (like working on certs or new skills, etc.) it feels like there is extra pressure. Today before a work meeting with a new client, the discussion turned into a semi-pdd and he started demanding to see my browser history to make sure i was working on one of the days we were talking about. Of course i refused but i feel like he is crossing a line, i don’t want to report to hr but i don’t know what to do. Suggestions welcomed
Curious to hear from people who’ve made this move or seen it closely.
If a consultant leaves a larger firm to join a boutique as a partner, what are the key things that actually matter in practice? What parts of the prior experience actually translate well?
Things like:
Hello!
As per the title, I'd like to hear from fellow former MBB and Big4 consultants, especially if they are now freelancing.
Recently I have been getting the usual project proposals for transformation of ops/processes and/or organisational aspects.
They want you to have a look at overall strategic direction, headcount and spans of controls, processes and their performance, governance, team management, IT tools etc. All good.
But together with these "classics", I'm now seeing requests for "agentic AI workflows", "Gen-AI assisted processes" and the like.
How do you relate and respond to the apparent expectation that somebody that comes from a managing consulting background (even with experience in spec gathering, process design and maybe a bit of testing of IT systems) should pretty much come in and do IT development work to embed AI agents and the like in the fabric of the business?
Or is it a case of clients just expecting the typical "layer" role that bridges the business needs with the technical stuff doing that will do the actual implementation?
What's your experience of the client expectations in that department?
I’m having a catch up this week with a client PM after a project that actually went well. All stakeholders happy.
Last week of the project though, this person behaved unprofessionally especially toward our Manager. It honestly unfair given all we were about to deliver.
This kind of behavior doesn’t sit right with me, so now I’m thinking what to do:
part of me wants to call it out directly in our 1:1, just say it wasn’t ok
part of me wants to escalate it directly because I know the sponsor pretty well (show that there are consequences for unprofessional behavior)
Another option is to explain to this person that this is counter productive for them too. Next project, fewer managers on our side would want to work with them (because bad experiences travel fast..). But I don’t want to sound like a teacher.
Or maybe I’m overreacting and it was just end of project stress that this person couldn’t handle very well. Perhaps I should let go but with the risk that it happens again, because there will be other business coming from this company.
I also want my team to be aware I take this stuff extremely seriously
curious how others handle this
any advice/idea/consideration would be greatly appreciated
So a few a couple months ago my counselor let me know that I’ve been identified as a candidate for promotion (I’m a senior 3 going for Manager). The only catch now is that during our last all hands it was announced that senior to manager promotions would require a promo case presentation to our groups PPMDs and Sr. Managers. Essentially you have 5 min to walk through how you’re qualified to be a manager based on your client delivery work, internal initiatives, people development and business development.
I think it’s a good opportunity as I’ll be able to present my case for myself rather than have my counselor do it for me… but I’m also really nervous about it because I want to do well and don’t want my shot at promotion pushed out because of a stupid 5 minute presentation.
Any advice for those who have gone through something similar?
Why do I feel like i don’t have higher calling in life. I’ve been in consulting for 5 years and there’s no projects I’ve loved or want to do. I keep joking about getting married rich but I’m not laughing anymore. I feel like my banking projects haven’t really set me up to do anything interesting. Please help :( I feel so alone and I want to quit.
Need some advice fellow consultants. I’ve been in a staff Aug position for about 2.5 years working for a VP at a bank. The VP spoke to me 1:1 about joining his team and working for a director that works for him. Upon speaking to the recruiter they wanted me to take a $30K paycut. I declined.
Now I’m in a pickle. I haven’t spoken to the VP yet about the huge paycut, and I didn’t mention anything to my engagement manager or account manager. What would you all do? If I tell my EM or AM I don’t want them to think I’m disloyal, and I am not sure what to say to the VP. My company has a contract with the client to EOY for my current services.
Do you start with a rough strawman deck to get the story out quickly, or build it properly from the beginning? I’ve found the strawman approach helps with structure early on, but sometimes it feels like you’re redoing a lot later.
Among many, one consultant asks for strawman decks for all his client projects before moving to the actual presentation. From my side, it can feel like 1.5x hours and I am happy about it since I bill by the hours spent 😅
Still, I’m genuinely curious if this is actually the most effective approach in practice. I can’t really ask him directly, so I’d be interested to hear how others think about it.
I keep noticing this when meeting the leaders and consultants on Zoom. Their fitness elevates their confidence too. I really admire. But here my view.
If consultants time is worth over $200/hour, how do they justify spending 1-2 hours at the gym? Do they just stop thinking in “money per hour”?
Or is fitness treated like part of the job?
I was hired by a client in September 2024 and everything has been going great. I set my own pace, my own schedule, I can work remote whenever, and I work directly with the CEO (my boss).
About 6 months in, I started seeing a pattern. He loves bringing in a fresh bottles of wine and getting the office drunk. This happens a few times per month on a Tuesday afternoon or some random day that isn't Friday.
Today, I walk in the office around 3pm and of course everybody is drunk and my boss is literally struggling to stand up and is sluring his words. I'm not much of a drinker but I am very much 420 friendly, but never come to work under the influence. I play it off as if I don't notice whats going on. But at this point, its starting to get really annoying. I actually had some stuff to talk about with him and decided not to for obvious reasons.
How do you handle this?
I thought I really enjoyed consulting until I realized I don’t want to be a manager. What other paths have people taken instead of staying in consulting? I just hit my 5 year and I feel like my skills are so random!
Was curious to hear people's take on my situation.
Background: work experience in big4 consulting, investment bank (structured finance), and big tech.
Got laid off 2x in 2025. Was making good money at my last place. This yr, I struggled to get traction with jobs at my prior comp range. Took me more than 3 months and hundreds of apps to just land few offers.
I became jaded with corporate America, after going through 2x layoff in one year. So I applied for a government job - ended up getting an offer recently. Comes with 60% paycut vs what I was making past 8 yrs.
I've been interviewing with a boutique consulting firm for past 6 weeks and after 7! interviews, I was just extended an offer. Pay is still below what I made at my last job, but still considerably higher than govt job. Pay difference here is around $70k a yr.
Pro for govt: job security.
Con for govt: low pay, seemingly boring work, slow to non existent career upside.
Pro for consulting job: more interesting work, higher caliber coworkers, higher career upside, higher pay ($70k per yr)
Con for consulting job: far higher odds of layoff
If you were in my situation, what would you do? Welcome to any feedback or advice!!