You need to believe the nonsense to succeed long-term
Pros
Career prospects: people take you seriously with BCG on your CV Colleagues: very driven. Lots of people ‘well-bred’… Quick-fire view: get to see into lots of companies in all different sectors and how they work. You cover the basics quickly without even realising. Eyeopener: real insight into how those with privilege and access think and feel. It’s very separate from ‘normal’ British society and is a rare insight
Cons
I wish I'd realised sooner (I've given up ~6 years of my life) that the whole thing is nonsense. It is a classic case of the 'Emperors new clothes'. BCG works by convincing: Employees: to succeed at BCG is to be ‘smart and successful’ (and therefore to fail is to not be) Clients: your capabilities are substandard. You can’t possibly achieve what you want to with your own people and we (BCG) know things you don’t When you start asking yourself ‘why?’ - why am I working 90+ hours a week changing font on ppt slides and listening to rich white dudes battle it out over the right ‘turn of phrase’ at 8pm every night of the week you realise there is no point to this - unless you believe that to succeed at BCG is to succeed in life. Even if you’re good at it once you ask ‘why am I doing this’ - it’s pretty difficult to go back from… If you have a modicum of self-worth not tied to having a status badge at BCG (or what you do for a living), or if you’ve lived a 'normal' life where people have genuine problems and do work that genuinely has an impact on society (or your business) i.e. they actually DO something then it’s pretty hard to justify WHY you are doing the job at BCG. Objectively: Very long hours filled with tedious work: a) majority of work covers similar topics (strategy, cost-cutting, due diligence, COGs …) there aren’t that many problems in business b) The model works on replication: taking the latest ‘BCG thinking’ and ‘packaging this up’ for the client in question (formatting it into their slides and changing a few words) c) Pointless work (Everything is possible, not everything is practical). Great giving a client a ‘master-plan’ but 9/10 they can’t execute it because it doesn’t fit their business and we have no idea how to actually execute everything. Also, nobody cares about that cool slide you did… d)Pay vs. overall renumeration: hour for hour you won’t get paid that much and you will say goodbye to evenings and weekends. Having time off is the exception not the rule. Be prepared for very disappointed friends and family Poor leadership: a) Very little investment in people training (as a PL I got like one afternoon) and the issue perpetuates because you have nobody to learn from (so you can't learn on the job as they say) b) No requirement to prioritise team's wellbeing / what work adds value: you're not evaluated on it really. You can (and will) treat people like expendable resources because they will do anything not to get a bad review c) Partners are cults of personality. You can get away with a lot of things you should not be able to in 2021 Unease in the work you are doing: a) Poor quality for clients who are often paying 5-6 figure sums to get the same answer as their competitors b) Experienced hires are used to boost the image of the firm, but we don't really leverage their knowledge - so clients are paying for a limited viewpoint from people who have never done the work c) Some work is just unethical: Helping sovereign funds buy out public infrastructure? Cost cutting to increase share-holder profits at the expense of low-wage workers? Being paid as the ‘Levelled’ to help the government ‘Level-Up’