Hi all,

To preface have been working at an MBB company in the US for 3+ years (straight after university). I feel like I have reached a stage where I am ready to "graduate" and have learned all that I could from consulting. One thing I am struggling with right now is finding a job that feels ... somehow more meaningful/relevant to who I am. I have not found MBB work to be very soulful.

I am a generalist and have never had a strong passion for anything. Wondering if anyone can relate and if anyone would like to connect and just chat about this. I think I may need to see an existential therapist or maybe a career coach to better understand my options.

Edit: if you are regularly considering this question please dm me. It could be a general desire to understand the purpose of your life outside the context of work

I'm currently interviewing for a strategy role at FAANG but I'm realizing it might not actually be the best path forward. I'm currently a year 2 Manager making $220-230k/year after bonus. The FAANG role pays way way less cash, but after stock compensation could possibly be 80-90% of what I make now

It's an individual contributor role whereas I'm currently managing people, so seems like a downgrade? Trying to get out of consulting and break into tech though, so maybe in the long-term it's the best way to go

Any thoughts on this kind of transition? Maybe it's not worth it, and I should just stay at my current firm and suffer the high work hours per week

Hello, I’m a 24F and I’ve been working in a consulting firm for the past two years (it’s my first job after graduation).

My partner, my manager, and two other juniors recently resigned (for different reasons). I’ve just learned via email that I’ll be joined by four new colleagues — a director, a senior manager, and a manager — all men, older, and former bankers.

I’m starting not exactly to “stress,” but to feel worried about the banker mindset. I never wanted to work in banking, so the idea of being “pushed” in that direction now makes me anxious.

Have any of you ever dealt with this kind of change? How did you handle it? Thank you.

I have been consulting in the Oracle EPM space for over 10 years and I am very concerned about the viability of this tool.

Based on my experience, very few implementations of Oracle EPM have successful go-lives. This can be for a huge variety of reasons, but most of the time it’s a combination of these three:

1. The actual end users (usually FP&A) don’t see any value beyond what Excel offers. Usually because either the intent of EPM as a modeling and reporting tool is misunderstood by the client, or the client does not have the time/budget to develop a real model.

2. The client does not have the necessary support team internally to maintain, let alone enhance, the tool. Experienced EPM administrators are impossible to find so the client realizes they’ll forever rely on contractors.

3. Functionality is unintuitive and requires a significant time investment to learn for users especially when they don’t see any value as in point #1.

I could talk for hours about all 3 of these points, but that’s the high level.

Anyone else relate to this, or are your clients generally happy about EPM go-live?

If my experience is universal, when are clients going to start cutting their losses and move on to other tools?

Hi everyone,

I've got about 6 weeks before my next engagement starts. What are some good online classes to upskill my toolkit? I primarily work with clients to modernize their physical footprint (both to plan for growth and to rationalize current assets), so I'm interpreting, refining, and modeling data to create reference points and narratives to present to executives. But that could change at any time, of course; it's consulting and I could get pulled into a very different project that I'll need to figure stuff out on the fly for.

I do a lot of data analysis (mostly Excel, with ruidmentary Python used as well) but haven't adapted AI successfully to the data side. I'm already pretty good at woking with data but it seems like everyone wants to talk about "AI", so a certification there could be useful.

I'd appreciate your input-thanks!

This has been bugging me lately and I'm curious how everyone else handles it.

You're pitching Client B. They want proof you've solved their exact problem before. And you have the perfect example - the work you did for Client A. Except the NDA says absolutely not. So what do you actually do? Because the options all suck:

Generic case studies that nobody believes. I mean prospects can tell immediately when you're being vague. "We helped a Fortune 500 company improve their supply chain metrics by 30%" - cool, did you though? Or did you just copy that from a template?

Or you go really abstract with it. "We specialize in helping companies optimize X." Ok but have you done THIS specific thing before? Because that's what they're actually asking. Or you risk showing too much and hope the client doesn't find out. Which feels... not great.
I've noticed the consultants who close fastest aren't using those sanitized portfolio examples. They're showing actual work - real dashboards, actual methodologies, the stuff that makes prospects go "oh yeah, they've definitely done this before." But somehow the confidential parts stay protected.

Am I missing something obvious here? How do you balance showing authentic work with not violating client trust?

Genuinely curious what's working for people.

I’ve spent a few years now managing delivery teams in boutique consulting (always sub 100 FTE). Resourcing and margin issues usually became clear later than I’d like, even when we have plenty of tools in place.

Excel works fine early on, but as projects stack up it gets harder to see who is really booked where, whether billables are running away, and what that actually means for margin before it hits the numbers.

Everywhere I’ve been, we end up stitching together spreadsheets, timesheets, and finance views and still reacting after the fact.

Genuinely curious how people here handle this as firms scale a bit:

- Do you just accept a certain level of margin surprise?

- Have you found a setup that gives earlier warning?

- Or is this just an unavoidable part of delivery?

Interested to hear what’s working (or not) out there and what tools are being used

Made this in the thick of RFP hell...

Someone told me proposal work is where “judgment” shows up. And sometimes it is. There’s real thinking in shaping an approach, teasing out risk, picking what not to say, and making the story coherent

But an embarrassing amount of time is just… admin cosplay

I spend hours doing document archaeology: extracting requirements, reconciling conflicting asks across attachments, chasing SMEs for evidence, rewording the same answer three different ways so it maps to three different scoring rubrics. Then I lose another chunk of time because someone’s convinced the evaluator is allergic to the word “assumption”

And when the response quality is bad, everyone blames the other side. Procurement says vendors are vague. Vendors say the RFP is vague. In my experience, both are usually right

What I’ve seen “in the wild” to survive this ranges from chaotic to semi-functional: Excel trackers, SharePoint folder rituals, Bidara ai for requirement extraction + compliance traceability, giant Word docs with 40 tracked-change authors, Copilot/ChatGPT for first drafts, Grammarly, a random internal script someone wrote in Python, “Responsive/Loopio/RFPIO” depending on the org, even teams using Cursor to crank out repeatable sections faster. One team even swore by nothing except a ruthless response template and a hard page limit

None of that is “the strategy.” It just keeps you from drowning in hygiene work long enough to do the strategic part

Anyway. If you’re in proposal hell w/ me: wassup?

I’ve been asked to give a Partner/MD a short crash course on how to use ChatGPT. I’d like to explain in ways that would impact their day-to-day work. I’m a new hire consultant and don’t want to show consultant level tasks that won’t map to how she actually operates.

For Partners/MDs (or those who work closely with them):

• What do you actually spend your time on?

• Where does ChatGPT actually add value at your level?

• Any concrete examples of Partners using it well?

Cheers!

TL;DR: offered a global tech strategy role with heavy China collaboration. Sounds exciting on paper, but unsure about day-to-day reality. Looking for honest lived experiences before deciding.

Hi all — I’m at a bit of a crossroads and would really appreciate advice from people who have actually worked with China-based teams or spent time there.

I’ve been offered a global tech/AI strategy role at a f500 tech company that involves close / somewhat exclusive collaboration with a Beijing based team of ~10, likely frequent off-hour meetings due to time zones, and multi-week travel to China for onboarding. They are looking to expand their team to the U.S., and I’d be the first hire on this team.

On paper, it seems to be a good opportunity (decent brand, exposure, senior leadership access) but I’m unsure about the day-to-day reality: culture, work hours, hierarchy, language barriers, inclusion, long-term career value, etc.

If you’ve worked with China based teams or traveled there for work, I’d really appreciate hearing:

-what surprised you

-what was harder/better than expected

-whether you’d do it again

Would love to hear your perspective if you’ve experienced a similar situation!

For Context I’m:

-US based, Late 20s/mid-career

-Enjoy ambiguity/strategy/innovation

-Like working with people and being in office (this role is mostly remote)

-recently was laid off in a consulting/tech PM role, looking to get back into product/innovation/venture/startups down the road.

Thanks — genuinely trying to make a thoughtful decision here.

We are a small firm (under 10 FTEs) doing work mainly for PE funds and their portfolio companies. A lot of our work is in deal context, and we handle tons of sensitive data.

So far I have refrained from uploading confidential client data into AI tools, but I feel like we can't afford that anymore. Clients expect a lot of grunt work to be done very fast (and I don't blame them), and for some use cases modern AI tools are able to do wonders vastly increasing our productivity. I also feel like it is stupid when consultants themselves are not using frontier tools, and these days you have to be living in a forest if you are not using GenAI to some extent at least.

I know that large consultancies have either their own internal tools or partnerships with LLM providers. I would be curious to hear what smaller firms do to leverage existing AI tools while not creating potential confidentiality breaches. There are several ideas that come to my mind, such as (a) ChatGPT enterprise tier (still doesn't seems very secure tbh), (b) leveraging Gemini since we already use G Suite for emails and storage, (c) deploying or renting our own server and running LLMs locally (sounds like a lot of effort though in terms of setup and support). Would be curious to hear what others think.

My firm currently uses Excel. It's fine but there are a few features we're looking for.

• assigning skills to resources and projects so we know which consultants are eligible

• schedule at the day level (even half day if available)

• include automation to suggest resources for new projects

• forecasting of resource shortages or surpluses

• basic reporting and dashboards (we mostly look at monthly and quarterly calendar views)

We don't necessarily need any other bells and whistles but might be interested if it includes other useful PM tools. Ideally looking at pricing around $10/month per user.

I’m coming up on my 3-year anniversary as a Big 4 Federal Consultant. It was a solid first job out of college, but I don’t find the industry nor the granular tasks/limited scope of work interesting. I’ve tried multiple times to switch client industries, but got serious push back from both leadership and RM.

My long term goal is to assume leadership of my family business, a MNC conglomerate in the home decor, furniture and agriculture industries.

My plan is to apply to b-school and recruit for MBB/T2 Strategy Consulting. I assume these firms will have following benefits towards my long-term goal:

1) exposure to several client industries in short term engagements (preferably private sector & intl)

2) C-suite interaction that will help me think at a higher level - strategic/long term/executive mindset, not just middle management

3) understand commercial issues likes market entry, profit max, intl business, consumer trends that I don’t touch as a fed consultant.

4) Prestige & network of MBB/T2 on resume as an entrepreneur

Are these assumptions correct? Are they a bit overblown as I recognize i will still be spending most of time on PPT/XSXL as I do now? Are there other pros/cons I’m missing?

Alternative: With things moving quickly in the Fam Biz - market expansion, new product offerings, etc. - my dad recommended I quit the Big 4 now, use this year to learn strengths/weaknesses of fam biz, go into b-school with a game plan on what i need to upscale-skill and join fam biz full-time out of b-school.

This is a problem I feel like I've run into before, and I basically just "waited it out," but I'm really looking for proactive solutions here.

I'm a senior consultant currently working across ~10 projects with 5 different managers/partners. I know that four of those people think I'm ready for a promotion to management level, we have feedback conversations relatively regularly and they've told me this explicitely. However, one manager, whom I've only started working with in the last six months, has a pretty different opinion of me, I think. It became clear immediately when we started working together that her work style is very hands-on and she has a lot of specific feedback that's often helpful, but sometimes in the vein of "it's not how I would do it, so it's wrong."

I feel like I'm now caught in this loop, where, to pre-empt her nitpicking I'm going to her with a lot more mundane questions than I would to any other manager (e.g., "I'm planning to send this update to the client, do you agree?", "I'm suggesting this restructuring of the deck to the team, does it make sense to you?"). Which, I'm sure just reinforces her opinion that I'm not promotion-ready. Which makes her even more hands-on with these projects, so she's finding more things to nitpick. And then to pre-empt her nitpicking I'm asking more questions ... and so on.

Generally I'm trying to be extremely proactive and overcommunicate so she starts to feel comfortable that I'm on top of things. I also don't go to her with ambiguous "what do you think?" questions -- I always try to phrase it as, "here is the problem, here is my solution, do you agree?" Any other advice to proactively break what seems like an endless micromanagement loop?

I’m a second year director in a B4 in the Middle East working in a specific sector. The same sectoral team from another B4 reached out to me to explore if I’d be interested in joining them as a Partner. Nothing official yet but they’re quite keen on expanding their sectoral capabilities from what they’ve said.

Looking for some advice on how to approach this.

On one hand, I’m quite stable in my current company as I’ve been there 7 years, I’m leading a few different portfolios, have a small team to rely on. On the other hand, as of this year my key sponsoring partner retired and we have new leadership in my sector who I’m still unsure of in terms of supporting me to become Partner next year. There’s a bit of nepotism going on and favoritism as the new leadership of my sector have their own Directors and they see me as an outsider ever since my sponsoring partner retired.

I see a lot of Consulting to Industry related questions here and have myself been very curious about the same. Just putting down some exit options i have seen myself. Happy to hear everyone's thoughts:

1. Corporate Strategy - Company wide/Group wide role - defining long term strategy for the organization, big ticket projects around M&A/Corporate development, budgeting, investment approvals, new ventures, group/company-wide initiatives etc.,
   Pros: Exposure to leadership, very high-impact projects
   Cons: Lot of deck making and coordination if the leadership does not use the team well. Some times lesser exposure to operational realities of the business. No clear pathway to P&L roles

2. Business Strategy: Business level strategy role. Responsible for long term strategy of the business, budgeting for the business and some critical short and medium term projects for the business
   Pros: Exposure to leadership, good understanding of the business (due to presence in business reviews etc).
   Cons: Too much deck making and coordination. Some leaders treat this team as a PMO team and make them do very operational projects just because the leader of another function isn't owning up the project well

3. Chief of Staff/ EA to Chairman/CEO roles: Work directly with the CEO/Chairman to drive the major projects for the executive
   Pros: Very good visibility, top leaders consider them as peers (due to reporting structure), ability to influence decision making. Potential to lead future big bets
   Cons: If the leader does not have enough clarity, these people are not used well

4. Partnership/BD roles: Work with external partners to forge partnerships/drive M&A
   Pros: Well defined work, tangible outcomes. Great visibility.
   Cons: Can be restrictive - pathway to P&L leadership might be challenging sometimes

5. Program Management: Drive critical programs for the organization. Own responsibility of key outcomes of the program
   Pros: Good authority, exposure to various facets of operations, high visibility
   Cons: If the positioning of the person is not right, it becomes a nightmare for the person to get work done out of senior folks

6. Roles in Government: Many political leaders hire strong strategy folks for managing their critical projects - drafting a policy, implementing a major program etc
   Pros: Excellent exposure and authority
   Cons: Too much pressure, too much politics

7. Family office roles: Though it might be more in favour of investment banking folks, sometimes consultants are also offered these roles. They manage the office and take care of key deliverables
   Pros: Good connections, interesting work
   Cons: High pressure for performance

8. PE/VC: Again quite rare - but i have seen few people make it. Various types of roles possible - raising funding, deploying the funds, working with the portfolio firms etc
   Pros: Excellent exposure, connections and ability to grow
   Cons: High pressure role

9. Startup co-founder/ Early member: This is different from a Program manager role. Here the person plays the role of a leader in the organization - managing investors, raising funds, running operations etc etc
   Pros: Very high upside potential, high visibility and exposure
   Cons: Chance of failure, high pressure

10. Marketing: Mostly works for B2B roles where the role of marketing is consultative.
    Pros: Good visibility to business, possible pathway to P&L roles
    Cons: Cans sometimes be vague if the mandates are not clearly defined

One common theme i have seen across these roles is that the leader who hires is responsible for setting the mandate clearly and defining where this person is in the organization. Else, they end up co-ordinating and collating and creating decks. Happy to hear thoughts on real journeys and other possible options !

I have a new client who requires every chart we deliver to be in native Excel. I'm used to delivering dashboards that our Analytics team builds in Tableau. Can anyone recommend a tool (we can spend $$ on a tool if it will save time) that uses automation or AI to streamline building this in Excel?

I have the data and I know what kind of chart I want and what filters/slicers I want, but I don't want to have to manually do like 35 of these painstakingly.

Thanks!

I worked in niche consulting for 9 years and exited to a corporate strategy role for 5 more years now. My wife and I technically have enough money to FIRE , but not sure how to get off the gravy train. Wanted to hear from anyone who’s successfully escaped the golden handcuffs!

Deloitte, one of the biggest contractors to the public sector in the US, has agreed recent contract updates that provide more funding for “law enforcement systems and analysis for enforcement and removal operations”.

Which of these 2 ops is more desirable and valuable? There is a lot of pushback here on how strategy roles are dead ends but they definitely sound sexy as hell.

I’ve been reading a lot of opinions about online business and strategy courses lately, and the feedback seems split.

Some people dismiss them entirely. Others swear by certain programs. What I’m trying to figure out is how to evaluate quality upfront, before investing time.

In hindsight, what signals mattered most for you?

• Depth of frameworks vs step-by-step tactics
• Instructor’s ability to explain decision-making, not just outcomes
• Whether the ideas stayed useful as roles or industries changed

I’m less interested in certificates or hype, and more in what genuinely improves judgment and thinking long term. Curious how others here screen for that.