No, You Cannot Change McKinsey from the Inside

A few weeks ago, I was invited to attend a virtual recruiting fair for a high-powered consulting group. I never had any interest in consulting, but I thought I’d attend just to see what it was like. I’d heard stories of strange interview practices, obscene salaries for new B.A.s (even in the humanities), and acceptance rates of 1% or less. The opening session began with the man who had emailed me, some sort of recruitment lead, talking about how he came to the group. He talked about working a menial summer job, having a friend refer him out of nowhere, and just stumbling into the firm despite no relevant experience. Instead of asking ridiculously difficult quantitative questions, his interviewer asked him about literature, which he studied in college. (He neglected to mention that college was Harvard). He opined on the incongruence and surprise of being offered a job, and explained (in detail) why he’s been happy ever since. He and a colleague argued the firm is fun, nerdy - it’s not a stuffy finance crowd, it’s a bunch of cool, smart people getting together to solve interesting problems. After the opening session ended, I closed my laptop and walked away. 

There is no amount of quirky rebranding that can disguise the fact that the fundamental purpose of this group - and so many others like it - is to make the wealthy wealthier. There are no community groups, small businesses, or activist groups that hire major consulting firms. They can’t afford to hire McKinsey or Bain to support their work - ironically because of wealth concentrations created by McKinsey and Bain. As argued here, management consulting dismantled the middle class by replacing traditional ladders to C-suites (working up from the bottom) with technocratic management from above (consultants drawn only from the most elite colleges and business programs). These groups have also widened the wealth gap by making workflows in all kinds of organizations more “efficient” - which inevitably hurts wages at the bottom. Management consulting is never going to come out in favor of workers’ rights. It is the absence of workers’ rights - and the costs it saves - on which management consulting has built its reputation as a moneymaker. Moreover, consulting depends on the management vacuum that was once filled internally with lower-wage workers to create demand for its services (as argued here). It is impossible, as one of my classmates put it, to “change McKinsey from the inside” - if management consulting works to improve the treatment of labor, it necessarily works for its own self-destruction. 

On other issues, like race, management groups can be more progressive. Public pressure demands it. Issues of intersectionality aside, is it possible that consulting groups could work towards something like racial justice, while avoiding the labor justice that would cause them to implode? I don’t think so. Regardless of what’s on McKinsey’s diversity and inclusion page, you don’t see BLM touting them as a thought leader (or even an ally). The communities BLM works most closely with and for (poor people of color across the US) have never heard of McKinsey. McKinsey hasn’t done anything for them - in fact, it has worked against them at every turn. Any concentration of wealth inevitably hurts Black people, since Black people have less wealth to begin with. When poor Black people get squeezed by corporate giants, McKinsey et al. can only say one thing: “tighter.”