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Chief
Don’t worry about it. Life is better when you don’t worry about this stuff
I'm actually doing a research on my master's paper on branding. And I want to include consulting industry as well! This will help me with my paper 😀
Chief
ACN, and I don’t even think they’re T2 today. Primarily choosing them due to the specialization in tech and implementation which is where the industry is going. Fancy PowerPoints alone aren’t cutting it anymore.
ACN. You will see a growing trend of other T2 firms try and emulate them in both the technology and implementation spaces in the coming years. No one cares about big ideas that can’t be implemented properly anymore, and pure strat doesn’t pay the bills.
Pro
Kearney is regarded closest to Tier 1 by my friends who work in MBB.
Rising Star
None will truly reach MBB IMO. People talk about revenue, but it's not just about that. It's also about breadth and depth of capabilities, the talent you attract, etc. There are excellent T2s where you'll have great careers, but as firms, it's not MBB.
All MBB have reached "critical scale" (including Bain with tremendous growth over the past few years - faster growth than BCG even). The most between them and T2s will only grow larger, if anything.
S& is great and has, in theory, the backing of PWC scale to propel it forward. However, being integrated with with accounting firm always poses risk to really taking advantage of that.
Kearney is also great but has struggled thus century in consistently growing. The last ~3 years seem to be a turning point with new leadership. It remains to be seen whether the firm will continue at a sustained pace, but the future looks positive. Even then, there's no truly catching MBB.
All this being said, it doesn't mean that T2 won't beat MBB for talent or amazing projects in many cases - they they today and will continue to do so. As a totality though, there is a gap.
2 cents from someone who went T2 to MBB.
Rising Star
D2 yeah I used to think this but they genuinely seem immune.
Opioids was a huge one - something that has genuine human horror associated with it and is something that the entire public and both ends of the political spectrum could chastise. And yet...
And I don't think any of them will actively defraud their clients / investors (which is the REAL no-no in capitalism, ala Enron).
Chief
Honestly the only T2 that has a shot of becoming a MBB is OW - although it's a very low chance. The "age gap" is just too big, any T2 would need insane growth for several years to reach revenue levels of Bain, the smallest of the MBB firms.
There are metrics like revenue per employee that some T2 are better than MBB firms (OW and LEK are better in this than BCG for example), but the sheer size is just too big of a factor.
Pay is competitive, and depending on the Geo its even better in some levels (Kearney used to pay more in UK, OW pays better in the Middle East and Brazil, I was told in China LEK had a pretty good salary, etc).
Rising Star
I hear Bain had 45% growth
Ow fs, lek life science and dd, kearney operations, ey-p dd
Honestly, I think it depends on the work you want to do.. Each of the T2s has something they are awesome at.
I heard S& is bumping MBA pay to be a leader there though 🤷♂️
OW
Rising Star
I’d argue kearney or S&. Only issue with S& is they’re starting to operate more and more like B4 than how they used too. Lots of cross staffing and low flexibility to move practices
S&
Agreed. They got closest type of work with MBB and the old booze was basically part of MBBB. One can argue that things got diluted but there are many booz people still there and driving the firm