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Chief
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I’m going to chime in here. Listen guys, I was counselled out a few years back and it’s not that bad. The koolaid at these places wants you to believe that your life is your next promotion and if you don’t get it everything is over. Let me tell you, it’s not. The only thing that’s over when you get counselled out is staying up until 10-11pm everyday, feeling anxious all the time, and never seeing your family. If I was offered my job back today I would, without a doubt, absolutely not take it. Ego / pride pales in comparison to quality family time and sleep.
My advice is if you get counselled out to go do something fun and meaningful, take some risk, try out new things, and go make the world a better place. In a few years, when the pain and jealousy subsides, you will look back and feel like you really dodged a bullet.
Someone please write this in gold and frame it.
4 issues
1) Many folks set up to fail. If you did not have a perfect new hire pairing, you would end up on the beach for weeks or months. Then set on cases that expect them to perform as if they did not have that gap. So, you more yellows + transitions from ill-supported staff
2) The performance bar has gone up, so the typical lower level green is now yellow. Note that we have also seen posts of folks going from top box directly to yellow. It seems politics have a lot more significance now than before
3) leadership continues a party line that “this is normal.” We all know that 20% attrition is normal, but the process they are going to achieving that involuntary transition has left many in the firm with a bitter taste ( whether they or their friends were let go).
4) low sales means that you have a free for all for cases among folks. This past jan, 50% of PLs in North America were on the bench due to lack of cases. However, the typical message to junior staff is: “well why haven’t you done more to try and get yourself staffed?”
I sense a lot more emphasis on billability than prior cycles.
Unlike the previous meetings, my willingness to take any available cases was specifically called out during this past review.
Chief
Goal of the firm leadership is hitting “normal” target transition %’s (think it’s something like 20%), and in regular years voluntary transition made up a decent chunk of that. However, with the state of the market causing less voluntary transitions firm leadership has mentioned that they’ll still aim for the target goal, meaning involuntary will make up a giant chunk.
This manifested in people getting hit with yellow ratings (basically PIP) from green out of CDC who in normal years would’ve been safe as well as some non-normal things (e.g., moving multiple boxes in one CDC, going from green to CTL).
Has been happening for a bit and the timelines for deciding to stay in the yellow or initiate transition are accelerated for senior folk.
Chief
I only got 6 weeks at McKinsey.
2-3 months is a BCG W
your phrasing it like that actually makes me more inclined to agree (not that I necessarily fully disagreed), but I'm curious for your justification. especially if it's a different team. your second point doesn't make it warranted
The math isn’t that hard to understand. Growth and pyramid shapes need to be at certain proportions to work well at a consulting firm.
Less job offers from outside means less people leaving voluntarily. To maintain the proportion you trim out low performers. The way they define low performers isn’t always clear and I understand this can feel unfair especially if it’s due to lack of at bats. But if you were the company and you had to reduce headcount, would you keep someone who has worked on a project and you know is doing ok work, or someone who might be good but have not shown it?
Sorry for the lack of empathy, but this is just my logic talking without any emotions. FWIW I might get transitioned since I have been only on proposal work since the start of the year. If I do, I find something else and move on. Plenty of other places to work at, or to discover your passion.
@BCG3 this is why, in the vast majority of cases, any company would be lucky to get anyone exiting at any level
Yes it’s true. Business has been truly awful (even a lot of the work there has been is investment or heavily discounted). It’s obviously not just normal attrition, looking like >30% of the group I started with a year ago are being let go
Also very few top box ratings, so effectively reducing pay for top performers
Relax we transition the same X% of folks every year. It just feels much more as
* there are much less voluntary transitions this year
* Fishbowl biased towards the negative side of things.
@Strategy& 1 managers are being let go because their clients aren’t buying. You can argue that that is a dimension of “performance” but we don’t consider it that way- it’s literally a different dimension on our reviews. That’s because performance can be excellent even when business is down— that’s luck and the economy.
That’s why people are frustrated, especially at the senior levels, that BCG refuses to use the term “layoff” even while telling people “were the economy better, you’d still have a job”.
A week ago I saw some of y'all jeering at banking and tech firms for the layoffs. What goes around comes around
What do you mean “didn’t already start”? It’s review season.
Hang in there.
Lol all I can say is BCG is attrition rates as per normal. Our business is extremely healthy. Lower voluntary attrition means more people leaving against their will. Life is good go worry about your jobs at your respective firms
Genuinely cannot tell if this is sarcasm
heard the same thing from my friends
What’s CSP?
Cash secured puts
F
As someone in the military, I read this as Career Skills Program, which McK actually just started going this year
How is BCG Gamma doing? Seeing a lot of postings online
BCG 11 don’t people share the revenue in gamma town hall every quarter? Or do they stop sharing it?
My colleagues at gamma said their staffing rate is extremely low right now. Most people working on SD. I am located at a country in Asia. Not in a good shape.