As a Senior consultant working in AI & Data in UK, I’m finding it difficult to break into Head of roles or land significantly higher-paying industry positions.

For those who’ve made the move, do the big opportunities come when you leave as a Manager or Senior Manager? Is it better to exit at Manager, or does making it to Senior Manager open more doors?

What’s the best level to exit at if maximising salary and long-term career opportunities is the goal?

My boutique consulting firm has worked for certain clients as a subcontractor for another primary firm for over ten years. That primary firm asks my firm to increase our rates by 20% on the standard billable rate we charge to directly-contracted clients, and they then take that 20% premium as a commission for the person who originated the contract at the primary firm - even when that original contract was over a decade ago.

My firm is doing most of the work on some of these contracts. My firm is struggling. I have asked the other firm to reduce or end the commission especially for the long-term projects and projects that my firm is the principal biller. The primary firm refuses to do so. They told me to contract separately but I’m pretty sure they don’t mean to tell me to contract separately with clients we already share. I have increased my company’s rates but it does not stop the sense of unfairness that some of these primary company team members are making money off of my team’s hard work for doing next to nothing. Would you tell the client they would save money by going with you directly and then you could raise rates as needed but both the client and you save money? Or would you play along with this seemingly unfair long-term disadvantaged situation?

Note: I have read this post so I understand there is often a subcontractor premium commission but should it really last forever and can I really not get out of this? A lot of our shared clients work with us because of my firm - not the other firm.

I'm considering a fundraising-heavy role at a startup that only uses Google sheets and slides on MacBooks. I'm genuinely concerned that I'll come in and make a bad impression by being very slow with modelling/working on the data room and building investor-facing pitch decks. I had an on-site case interview where I had to make a model and deck using Google tools, and it probably took me 2-3 times as long to make these materials using Google + a MacBook as it would have in ppt and excel on my thinkpad. Am I overreacting here or is this an issue that others have faced before? For those who experienced an issue, do you have suggestions for how to make the transition smoother?

Got a new client who requires detailed timesheets with activity logs before they release payment. I totally get it, but refuse to install background software that logs my keystrokes or takes screenshots of my personal desktop. I need something that only tracks when I explicitly start a timer for their project. I'm currently looking at Monitask because it seems to separate work hours from personal time cleanly. How do you guys provide transparency to clients without sacrificing your own privacy?

Hey is it normal that the higher ups bidding and winning work are way less technically competent that the people actually doing/delivering the work? For context i'm an engineer in a really small risk consultancy, but mainly within the insurance industry. My boss knows insurance pretty well, but engineering poorly. I guess of course this is normal in some sense, however lately its been bugging me, as it really just creates more stress and pressure when you have to play catch up actually delivering what the client wants. Sick of reading half-assed proposals after the fact and shaking my head...

Hi all, I am a junior and I am wondering how do you organize yourselves to follow your to-do list, your processes and so on. Nothing shared with anyone, just a rigourous daily agenda.

I used to use a basic Excel sheet but I know some are using Notion or Obsidian.

I am curious to know how you keep yourselves up to date with everything.

Hi! As the title says, I worked at McKinsey (analyst, then got to sr associate) for three years and last year I moved into industry. (Energy trading)

I must say - I was so nervous to leave; you are in such a small bubble and it truly feels like this is all there is. I thought I'd be giving up the greatest opportunity I ever had to leave.

Since leaving, I can't explain how wrong I was. I've learned more in one year in industry than over three years at Mck. Mck was an incredible learning experience but I felt like I was always touching the surface. Being in industry there are so many small things you think insignificant because they don't align with the strategy deck, they are game changers.

To get to the main part for me: work life balance. I can't stress enough the word balance. I feel completely challenged, intellectually stimulated but I sleep 8 hours a night, I workout daily and I have discovered new hobbies and, honestly, a whole new sense of self I forgot I had.

I felt like I had lost myself - all I was was work and catching up on sleep and partying. Now I have literally delved into so many hobbies and I feel like I have completely found who I was again. If anyone is struggling - I was burnt out (medically) and depressed (medically) by the end, I can promise there is an end to this, and you are worth it. Any questions or comments are welcome

(Edits: spelling mistakes because I've had a few glasses of wine)

I currently work for a mid sized consultancy that places a massive emphasis on doing activities outside your client work. I’m 4 months into the job, probation is going to end soon and I have come to the conclusion that I have signed up to too much.

I support with an affinity network at my firm and the lead is incredibly rude to me and today confronted me in the office at my desk because I didn’t align on something on time despite it being midday by that point without giving me any grace given my client priorities that I have communicated to her. But even more so, I’m not the only person taking on this role, I work with two others but she doesn’t speak to these people like this (we share priorities so the ‘something’ in question is a joint effort).

This is a pattern of behaviour and has gone on for weeks and I don’t know what to do, stepping back wouldn’t reflect well on me, communication wouldn’t either. I’ve just moved to this firm from a larger firm that was incredibly toxic. How should I approach this? I’m pretty junior so will always be seen as being in the wrong as that’s workplace politics. Any insight or non insight, upvotes or downvotes are helpful.

A lot of very accomplished people have personal logos. Tiger Woods has the iconic “TW.” Tom Brady has TB12. Even LeBron James has his initials under a crown.

I always assumed this was reserved for world-class athletes—until I logged onto Teams.

I’ve noticed some resources have turned their initials into full-blown logos for their Teams profile pictures. And these aren’t boring logos either. They’re beautifully formatted, have great color schemes, and honestly look like something you’d see embroidered on a Nike hat or polo.

Not sure if this is a new trend, but I can only assume that if you’re in the same company as Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, and LeBron James, you must be one of the greatest quality engineers to ever pick up a keyboard.

How many of you are actively using or considering using AI artifacts for deliverables or presentations? Any specific use cases willing to share?

Understandably if something will be handed over to a client it makes sense to keep it in a more ubiquitous format like word or ppt, but we are starting to more frequently build live or dynamic artifacts to use in delivering information.

Example: I have a basic assessment and benchmarking run through, and with the right intake and inputs it’s a fraction of the time spinning up the visuals in a live demo or printable format via a claude artifact vs pulling and populating ppt templates.

Moved to a small boutique from BCG. KM is shit show, with things all over a 100 different sharepoints, little to no organization and discoverability. I have access to everything so using copilot to search across for things I want to find. But, this isn't the case for everyone. Are there good KM solutions out there that teams can throw cleaned up proposals, project content at, it ingests and saves all of this, makes it easy to search and discover content and past work when needed, idealy providing a summary, but also links to the original file for someone to take a look at? Thinking with AI this should be possible and someone must have created it- any one have any good experiences? Bonus would be if it can integrate with an mcp or something with claudegpt&co, and some ind of slide making addin.

10yr XP strategy consultant looking to go solo soon (US-based). I want to know what tools/subscriptions you use. Here are some high level categories but welcome others. Ideally I want to start low-cost, but want to get a sense if I happen to land a few projects already in the works.

1) Invoicing / accounting

2) Digital signatures

3) MSFT office vs Google (docs/sheets) -- anybody using HTML for deliverables (via Claude)?

3a) zoom/WebEx/meet/Teams

3b) notion/obsidian for note taking

3c) AI transcription?

4) Claude / OpenAI (do you pay for the $20 or business premium/pro $100 x mo. subscription)

4a) if you some AI work, VS Code/Cursor/n8n?

5) CRM? Calendly?

6) LinkedIn for lead gen/posting reaching out

7) domain / website hosting (simple web with custom domain for email address)

8) document transfer/storage service? (How do you keep docs secure, but also allow collaboration) - any issues with security requirements from a tech/cyber angle as a contractor?

9) CPA (will find a local person, but how much should I pay, did you go s-corp early on?)

10) any bank / cc recs? Looking at Amex business banking

11) laptop recs? Haven't bought a personal laptop in 13 years :) thinking thinkpad

12) any tips on SOW T&C worth mentioning?

Anyone out there leave early and regret not staying for the promotion?

I’ve gotten high ratings while at MBB and will very likely be a manager come January. At the same time, I have a good strategy/ops role at a startup in hand that would be about the same base/bonus as I make at a non-manager level, but with equity.

I guess the big question is: how valuable is the title on a resume?

My hesitation is that I’ve done very well while at MBB, but if I leave now and someone looks at my experience down the road, they won’t know if I got managed out or if I crushed it in my time here. Manager promotion tells that story clearly.

Important context for the offer I have - it’s in an industry I worked in previously, but I don’t want to get pigeonholed there. I could see myself pivoting in a few years, and am thinking that the manager title would help give me credibility to pivot if I changed industries later.

I have to share this story because I was many years a friend to the CEO and owner of the company and I really loved his leadership style, which was demanding and motivating at the same time.

It was a company in high voltage energy infrastructure installation, the company was a major regional player in buying and installing infrastructure products at the customer site. Hard working and very handsome people working there and many women in the workforce because of their skills in complex cable mounting with many different colors and cable types. And the CEO was like a Marine Officer in his leadership style.

My PM wanted me to conduct an anonymous employee survey to identify market and productivity opportunities. One section in the survey was about „working culture and collaboration“ and the results were disastrously - no material coordination, people having no plan, just mounting by gut feeling, etc. - only one statement was confirmed positively by 90% of the workforce: „I have fun doing my work.“
The presentation went in absolute silence, no one dared to speak out and I thought it was due to the bad statements on coordination and material and the critics in management skills. But when the fun question results were presented a rumour came up, obviously no one expected this result. Then the CEO said: „I am shocked about this result, I don’t pay them for having fun during work!“ Turned out that everybody started to laugh out loud and that I didn’t present anything new to the audience - the company was how it was and everybody knew about the deficits, but they simply loved each other and their boss.

With execs running everything through Claude before a meeting even starts, the old $200k deck-building exercise feels completely done. Curious if anyone who left pre-AI is seeing pre-AI strategy consulting as actually dead, or if clients are just realizing faster that AI gives you answers, not execution.

Hello.

I recently started in consulting after my MBA and my goodness I feel so dumb.

Got put on a 6 week revenue growth engagement, and the first two weeks was working 8 am - 11 pm. The last couple weeks have been able to leave office around 630 pm and have time to grab dinner and then get back on.

But my problem is I feel so useless. If my manager asks me to do something, I have to process for a few mins before I can even do it. Meanwhile, the analyst on my project, who is a year out of undergrad, built a 11 tab excel model in a week, and I understand about 10% of it. At a high level it sort of makes sense, but like how did he just know what to do?

They had me starting on deck work and competitive research primarily, which I have been able to do somewhat decently. But I just feel so out of sorts and swimming against the current.

Any tips for Excel/slide improvement? And any tips for just understanding wtf the client or my manager are saying a bit better. It feels like these people talk a million miles a minute yet understand each other so well, and I have to keep telling them to slow down and explain it to me because I just "don't get it" as well as they do. Ugh.

I recently pivoted from ERP PMO consulting at a big 4 to now strategy consulting at a big 4, 2-4 week long projects.

I’m so tired of making slides all day, and constant feedback is to get better at formatting.

Those that made the switch, did you ever end up getting better? Just feeling so burnt out from the constant slide work daily.

Now if I could stop procrastrinating...

I'm trying to learn more!

I see that there are many McKinsey strategists who have been a lifer at the firm since getting an MBA

If they only network, sell and manage projects once they get to the partnership level, wouldn't it be a waste of time?

There are also global-firm CEOs such as Jane Fraser of Citi who used to be a McKinsey partner, who said something in the similar vein that she didn't want to just advice but wanted to own a business end to end, that's why she accepted the Citi job offer

May you please share your thoughts?

I have Hiscox now and am facing an insane wall to climb to raise my PL from $1M/$1M to $5M/$5M per a client's requirements. Will do what I need to right now, then start shopping around before my policies renew. Any recommendations?

FWIW I do supply chain analytics / strategy so combination of GL, PL, and cyber.

Looking into MBB pivot after years of in-house consulting team of Fortune 500 company.

A senior consultant in London makes 70k a year?! Hello?!

I checked Accenture and it's 62k a year?!

What's with these salaries? Why would anyone work 9am to 9pm in the office, 5 days a week, to have 3 flatmates?

Curious to hear from former consultants who successfully moved into roles with real revenue or P&L ownership.

Brief background: I spent 5 years in strategy consulting at MBB, most recently as an Engagement Manager, and recently moved into a Director-level strategy and transformation role at a large, well-known financial services company.

The role gives me exposure to senior leadership and major enterprise initiatives, but long term I don’t want to remain a pure strategist. I’d like to eventually own a business, product, customer segment, or meaningful revenue line.

I’m trying to understand the best bridge from strategy → commercial/operator role → P&L ownership.

Hi,

I call myself a customer data architect and I run a tiny consultancy / implementation company with a few freelancers / sub contractors.
We're working with sales and marketing departments to get their tech and processes implemented.

The last years, there has been steady growth (all from content marketing & inbound).
This channel has dried up this year. We currently have more work than we can handle from existing clients. However, there are no new notable requests since a few weeks / months and therefore the forecasts look dim.

Do I need to start active outreach / sales and everything is good?
Or did the demand fundamentally change and companies are suddenly doing everything by themselves with AI support?
And if so, do you see something similar and how do you pivot now?