When Mckinsey Comes to Town
An explosive, deeply reported exposé of McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm that advises corporations and governments, that highlights the often drastic impact of its work on employees and citizens around the world "Meticulously reported, and ultimately devastating, this is an important book." —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing McKinsey & Company is the most prestigious consulting company in the world, earning billions of dollars in fees from major corporations and governments who turn to it to maximize their profits and enhance efficiency. McKinsey's vaunted statement of values asserts that its role is to make the world a better place, and its reputation for excellence and discretion attracts top talent from universities around the world. But what does it actually do? In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Often McKinsey's advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short-term profits, thereby boosting a company's stock price and the wealth of its executives who hire it, at the expense of workers and safety measures. McKinsey collects millions of dollars advising government agencies that also regulate McKinsey's corporate clients.
Stats for nerds
12recommend
22mentions
17people
2023–2026years
59% recommend41% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- When McKinsey Comes to Town - The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm. By Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634029/when-mckinse...
- > They all work with restructuring companies!! So, I hope that tells you how smart they are :-)
"When McKinsey Comes to Town" is an interesting read that covers a lot of this. It's worse than I thought.
- If you're from UK, you should read the book "When Mckinsey Comes to Town[0]", it has a chapter on how it fucked up NHS.
[0] - https://www.amazon.com/When-McKinsey-Comes-Town-Consulting/d...
- I always like to recommend the book When McKinsey Comes to Town in any post about Management Consulting
- My general takeaway from a bunch of comments is that there were two death waves for these late night places. But, I have a great fix.
First, Starbucks committed coffeeshopicide by targeting local hangouts that were successful, and then spraying their own burnt grounds, driving up real estate and making it impossible for a small, less efficient shop to survive. I saw this happen at several great places in Portland. Then, obviously a career climbing executive at Starbucks tried to get promoted and tightened up hours.
The second wave of late night coffee shop deaths occured with COVID and homelessness (really McKinsey and Purdue opioids, read "When McKinsey Comes to Town") because of safety. No one, big or small, can offer a space and decide which hipster can stay and which has to leave because he is now addicted to drugs and not just Instagram dopamine.
The solution: cities should offer a tax break to a coffee shop that stays open late. And, cities should offer a match where they create a space nearby for homeless people to congregate late night. I'm sure there is a correlation between the number of homeless and soon-to-be homeless creative types.
I'm saddened late night coffee shops have largely disappeared, these Yemeni shops look terrific. And, they bring the social back to meeting places, and I don't mean social media and laptops.
- "McKinsey is a very different firm today than when these matters first took place"
No they are most certainly not. Corruption is in McKinsey's DNA. Outside of the specific harms that McKinsey has caused across the country and across the world, management consulting groups in general have been utilized to sidestep legal protections against corporations within a shared industry colluding against each other. Companies like McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, etc., have been instrumental in the rapid increase of executive compensation, flat comp for workers compared to inflation, intentionally unsafe practices and corner-cutting to save money, and just generally creating as many negative externalities as possible in the name of feeding the beast that Milton Friedman created with his rhetoric about the primacy of the shareholder.
A good read on this topic is "When McKinsey Comes to Town" by Forsyth and Bogdanich. There's a whole chapter dedicated to the South African bribery scandal. Sagar was not just a bad apple -- the company itself is the rot.
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