I’m in the lucky spot to decide between offers at AlixPartners (Director) and Boston Consulting Group (Associate Director).
I’ve been working with the HBR career decision scorecard (highly recommended!) to quantify and visualize pros and cons. On top, it’d be helpful to get insights from you 🐠.
I’m particularly interested in factors like differences in culture, the real-life possibilities and use of flexible work arrangements and commercial expectations.
Thanks! 🙏🏼
Obviously I’m biased but unless you have a principal / parter offer from BCG, this is a no-brainer for me. For context BCG recently changed its titles and partners are basically senior principals and don’t own equity - only MDPs do. And I understand associate director is the expert track.
So I’ll mention a couple of areas for consideration:
1. Comp - You know this the best. The offers are probably close enough but we most likely have higher upside.
2. Career growth - if your end goal is to stay in consulting, our path makes more sense. You can either choose to stay a director with zero pressure to up or out, or if you want to push for MD, you can make it in 2-5 years provided you are commercially successful. At BCG, the expert track is secondary to the generalist one and somewhat “discriminated” against in terms of promotion and compensation. But if your goal is to exit, the BCG brand name is definitely better than ours but at your level, exits tend to depend on relationship and your personal brand, less so on that of your firm.
3. Work life balance - We are much, much better.
4. Culture - this is somewhat subjective. In my opinion Alix is somewhat “cultish” and those who enjoy it here (myself included) truly love our culture and lack of bs. We are a lot less diverse if that’s what you care about - but we are working hard to improve. Compared to BCG we are also very flat (you can push back on your MDs more) and very “diamond” like - with probably over 70% of the consulting headcount in MDs, Directors and SVPs. That means senior people roll up their sleeves to do the work along with VPs and SVPs. I quite enjoy it, but know it’s not for everyone.
Edited - forgot to mention (and definitely important) - we don’t build 100+ pages of appendices. We care about the quality of advice and less so (compared to BCG) about the look of pages. On the downside some of our decks are truly ugly but on the upside you don’t do slide masturb*tion nearly as much.
What was the decision?
My husband, a BCG MDP, left BCG for Alix, it was the best professional decision he could make. If you really enjoy the commercial aspects of the job and building a business and a team, the job seems great. At BCG, he was effectively delivering work for a Senior MDP, now he's actually building a business. Not for everyone of course, but it sounds fun for the right personality.
D1: any particular area of BCG tech advantage you are going for ? When I compare McK and BCG tech practice, MCK’s leadership seems to be diverse.
I was in the BCG Expert Track for several years. It is an incredible difficult way to gain commercial traction. You are always an afterthought for BCG teams that are in the regular generalist “up or out” track. Unless you have a clear way to show commercial traction (in other words: people desperately need your expertise), it is constantly running after projects and hoping that somebody will be willing to pay your rates. That said, a few expert track folks are very successful. It all depends on what expertise you have. The Associate Director title is much less prestigious than the Partner and AD title. An AD is effectively a Principal. Most ADs are fairly junior. BCG brand is hard to beat, and watching BCG MDPs at work is a learning experience for life. Culture? It’s good, but in the end, it’s still work that you do for a living, so I would not overindex here. Happy to chat if you are interested, just send me a DM.
Use to work at BCG, feel free to DM if helpful. Really for me, the key question is to do you want to be an expert or do you want to be an equity owner of the firm? Do you want to stay in consulting or exit? Do you want to work with F100s or PE portcos and smaller companies? If you do want to exit or want to be an expert I would suggest BCG. BCG also does a lot more work with F100 / F500 companies.
This is spot on - they are really fundamentally different roles. I have worked with and love a few of the ECT folks at BCG, but it’s a different gig. It’s not necessarily better or worse as the good ones are in high demand and get to develop true expertise which is cool, but you should know what you are getting into. Can I ask how you landed a senior ECT job without being very topic focused? I would think it’s a separate recruiting process to general track at that level of tenure
Rising Star
Both firms are top notch, so congratulations!
The comp will be good at both firms, and it’s probably a wash. BCG carries more prestige for exit ops with a few exceptions where Alix is particularly strong (ex. restructuring, PE ops)
There are definitely some major differences between the firms. BCG has a significant support structure both in tools, playbooks, and leverage. Alix does not. This comes with pros and cons, and it really depends on what you want to be doing on a day to day basis. At Alix you will be spending a lot of your time delivering on your engagements. At director (or even MD) at Alix, you are on the ground, engaging the client, doing the analysis, and making slides.
Also consider that with 10 YOE, you will likely stay at D at Alix for a long time. The jump to MD at Alix is primarily tied to you ability to sell work. The path to BCG partner is likely shorter.
15 years to partner seems to be quite a reasonable life at MBB or the Big 4s?
With even moderate success as an AD you will be promoted to having a Partner and AD (PAD) title. Externally it will say you are a BCG Partner and most people outside do not understand that the ECT track is different from MDP track. If you are REALLY SUCCESSFUL as a PAD you can become an MDP (equity partner) and make $2m+ per year. It is not the norm for ECTs but there are more than a small handful of examples in the past 3-4 years.
Lol at making PAD is easy.
BCG- brand value
Thanks 🐠 Your insights gave me tremendous food for thought - truly valuable and much appreciated! Great to see this community work this way 🙏🏼
Good luck ! Pls let us know which route you are taking. 🐟
OP, congrats! Can you pls share your areas of expertise?
Thanks! Please see my comment above. 👍🏼
As other BCGers have mentioned ADs transitioning to MDP is not very common. But, every example I can think of who made it was a lateral hire AD like yourself. Most of our home grown ADs have already stepped off the track to MDP so they are far less likely to ever make the run again.
I’ll also echo the comment that the AD experience seems to be heavily driven by practice area and what your sponsoring MDP brings you in on.
What practice and what is your area of specialization, also how many YoE
It’s always a trade-off 😎 Thanks for pointing this out.
Rising Star
For what kind of work?
See above 👍🏼
What are your career objectives?
Op - Are you inconsulting now and if yes will you be moving from B4 or T2 or another boutique?
Mind sharing TC offers? At least for Alix. I joined as a director a few years ago and would like to compare. Feel free to PM.