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WSJ nailed it this morning
India war memorial
Every company is a saas company nowadays……
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"post_content": "What’s the youngest people manager you’ve encountered, in consulting or industry? Met a 23 year old manager that’s running projects and has 2 counselees. So bad ass.",
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Generally leery of wunderkinds, especially in an industry like ours where a solid grasp of PowerPoint and big talk can get you quite far.
Being young and awesome is great, but the important thing is that they're awesome.
Honesty I don't care how good you are, I'm not letting you run a real consulting project 1 year out of undergrad
If they’ve demonstrated a working knowledge of the industry, have the soft skills to complete the job, and are mature for their age, why can’t recent grads be given opportunities to stretch early on? I feel like the individuals that are concerned are behind the curve for their role/age and are worried about losing opportunities to promising up-and-comers...
You guys took this way too far. This “individual” is a first year manager, and is running their 2nd project. Did perfectly fine on their first one and is doing great on the second.
Side note - they also worked in industry all four years of undergrad and took night classes. I’m assuming that’s why they have a leg up
SC1: truth is, they aren’t. And It is not about not giving them the opportunities to do a stretch role, it’s how well they do it and if they can maintain it. Which sadly, a lot of these early promotes cannot maintain it in the long run and they just screw the team morale over
Nope, Big 4.
^fair statement. If they aren’t consistently performing at that level, and haven’t demonstrated a pattern of success, then I’d agree. Ultimately, I’m against prohibiting people from opportunities because of tenure if they’ve demonstrated that they can perform at that advanced level. That being said, it seems like a poor decision was made to promote this individual, as they’re not performing at the level they should be.
There are a few firms that do this - a path straight from analyst to manager.
They always make claims that it's about their excellent performance or something like that, but 9/10 times it's because that person has family connections in companies and/or industries that the firm wants to break into to.
It's a gamble, but it can get your foot in the door somewhere important. If it just means burning out some kid for access, it's usually worth it.
Boutique?
I was a PM at 22 on a project of 13. At 24, I was solely parachuted into troubled projects that were managed by old farts like M1 to bring them back on track. I am now 29 and manage some of our largest global transformations out there with 50+ consultants.
Higher age does generally mean more experienced, and experience is good ... but it doesn’t mean that young folks cant pull it off. PMing is a lot about common sense, being organized and able to manage relationships. If you are confident and awesome, you can do it no matter the age.
You can get away with very young managers doing repeatable work like audits and assessments.
No so much with more complicated work. I’ve see a lot of people plateau after early promo.
Wunderkinds are all over. Our clients see right through them
SC1 - maybe the current project is not a good fit for them?
That could definitely be the case. Although they made have demonstrated the soft skills necessary to manage, perhaps they’re lacking in industry knowledge because of their limited experience?
There are a lot of hidden details which people miss - yeah the manager is doing fine and so is the project but what about the team
I worked for a manager with 2 years of consulting experience and no industry experience - the project was fine but we worked all weekends and lake late nights