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Chief
The most impacted industries have been the ones that benefited from the extremely low interest rates. Tech companies and startups were flush with easy to acquire investor cash. Then tech was the first and hardest hit by the rising interest rates. Many companies were happy to spend on consulting projects even if the ROI wasn't significant because borrowing money was easy. But with 5.5% Fed interest rate they're tightening their belts and reducing spend on many things including consulting projects without guaranteed ROI.
Rising Star
With chatgpt being used to evaluate proposals the game is changing. Good luck!
We are traditionally a lagging indicator of economic hardship (as we work through a backlog of sold work), and a leading indicator of economic recovery. We are now feeling what industry has been feeling for a long time. The good news is that usually our down cycles are compressed, because as soon as our clients have capital free up they start spending again.
Chief
Remember that Steve Jobs clip that gets reposted every few weeks?
“You’re also a variable expense and in hard times you’ll find yourself, you know…variable.”
Rising Star
That was great. Let’s see a show of hands…
It’s not, you’re just reading headlines and are surrounded by posts and are extrapolating
Consulting is still adding more jobs than it’s cutting
So, are we saying that so many new admin, security, and cleaning jobs were added in October, that the loss of consulting jobs was outweighed by net new jobs in “professional and business services”?
(Disclaimer: No idea how accurate that bar chart is.)
The ROI of consulting work can be high (rare) or low (common). In both cases it can be pretty hard to measure. And if you can’t measure something, then it becomes hard to justify.
It makes sense. There are many consulting teams that cannot articulate their own value in financial terms to a client.
In a bad economic environment clients will cut the projects with low and/or uncertain ROI.
We are doing just fine, really
This is likely just availability bias because objectively speaking, consulting has NOT been doing worse than tech. It probably hasn’t even been doing worse than IB, which has had bonuses drastically cut up and down the chain.
Consulting is a reflection of other industries doing poorly in this economy. When companies are looking to cut expenses because they are cash strap , $ spent that doesn’t equate to $ gained might be cut first. This is also reflective of companies cutting their bottom performers/ these performers are high $ but low $ yield …like consulting rn :(
Because we’re non-essential in most cases.
Funny McKinsey brains is asking this
Because businesses don’t need us to run bau
We’re a luxury and nice to have during macro growth periods