Glam World of Management Consulting Takes Another Hit - McKinsey Announces 1,400 Job Cuts

"Need consulting services to help our company [McKinsey] show show bare min emphathy in layoff comms today [sic]" - Employee at McKinsey posting on Fishbowl Consulting, March 28, 2023. Here is the thread.

This morning Bloomberg was the first out there reporting that leader in the management consulting business McKinsey will lay off 1,400. That's in a restructuring. Further reductions in manpower will happen through attrition and voluntary buyouts.

The 1,400 is not as large as the number of cuts McKinsey anticipated making. In February it noted a reduction-in-force could total 2,000. However, what we should be looking at are not the raw numbers but what the decision indicates.

At the top of list is that in professional services management consulting is experiencing the same vulnerability in this volatile world economy as Wall Street and law. We still haven’t absorbed completely that Accenture is axing 19,000. Will demand for those services at a premium fee ever get back to where it had been before the current unraveling? Will more businesses, especially using ChatGPT 4, develop a DIY mindset, no longer reaching out to the supposed experts in problem-solving?

Next is the meme, introduced by Meta, of efficiency. How far will cost-costing go? Already, for example, IT spending by corporations has been reduced. And, most to the point, will that become the kind of extreme belt-tightening which could trigger a major global financial downturn?

And, as the poster in Fishbowl Consulting wonders: What about the human part in all this? How will those who are shown the door be treated? Next, once out there, how many will be able to land on their feet and find comparable work?

The labor market for all sorts of talent is already becoming glutted. That includes media, communications, IT, law, and finance. Soon enough, management consultants (with the exception of those with  a big book of business) could hear what those in other niches have been told for a while now: You are a dime a dozen.

Of course, the glut can worsen with generative AI.

Meanwhile, on professional anonymous networks there will be plenty of chatter about what will be the next shoe to drop in management consulting.

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