What's Bain like in terms of work life balance? I heard they have a more local model, interested to hear people's experiences, specifically in healthcare

Bain is just like any other firm...worklife balance is highly dependent on your case, leadership team and how effective you are at the job. Been on 90+ hour/week cases and ~50 hour/week cases. That said, generally leadership cares a lot about worklife balance and tries to make it better. Doesn't make sense to talk about healthcare only since Bain has a generalist model -- you wouldn't just work on healthcare cases (unless you are a principal/partner focusing on healthcare)

Slightly off topic but why does MBB refer to projects as "cases"?

I have never heard anyone at PwC refer to a project/engagement that way

At Mck we call them studies. The original goal was to sound less commercial and positions us as "thought partners" here to solve an intellectual challenge, rather than be outsourced labor working on an assignment. Marketing.

Just the terminology we use...doesn't seem all that unusual to me, and used many places in the consulting world (e.g. "Crack the Case")

In terms of future opps, do you feel like the generalist model hurts you bc you don't get to specialize in a certain area? Or does having Bain on your resume pretty much make up for the less specialization in a sector?

Probably depends on the industry to be honest. Really complicated industries probably want expertise, but generally I've found companies value the diverse set of experiences.

I'll echo comment about leadership actually caring about case sustainability and team morale. Whenever our (bi-)weekly case team scores come back low, there'll be a team discussion on tactical steps to make the case experience better. Stark contrast to my personal experience in Big 4 consulting pre-MBA.

You guys have biweekly feedback sessions???? Wtf that's amazing

Also varies a lot by office - SF is amazing (people are generally out by ~6-8), vs other office I've worked in (9-10 becomes more normal). Hard to compare to other places - I'm a direct promote so I haven't worked elsewhere - but there's generally pretty great commitment from senior ppl to make your life sustainable within the bounds of a client services business. Some offices are really embracing flex models like 2 months vacation, part time client facing staffing, leaves of absence.

Yah - we actually have a weekly case team survey to measure key metrics - Do we feel like our case is delivering value to client? Do we think the case is sustainable? What should we continue/stop/start doing as a team? And so on. On one case, the team even artificially kept the scores high because we were tired of leadership trying so hard to talk to us about making the case experience better.