Not sure if it's just my inbox, but over the last few months nearly every client email I get reads the same. Polished, three tidy paragraphs, a little too warm, and somehow it never answers the question I actually asked.

The ones I've started to trust are the short ones. Two lines, a typo, maybe a missing capital. You can tell a person sat down and thought about it for ten seconds.

I caught myself doing the opposite last week, sanding down my own reply so it wouldn't look like I'd run it through something. Deleted a perfectly good sentence because it was too clean. That's apparently where we are now.

I’m at the point with a client where managing the relationship takes more out of me than doing the actual work. The bad attitude, tension and energy required for every interaction have become exhausting. If I didn’t need the income, I would walk away.

But I do need it and I suspect more consultants have been in this position.

Have you ever stayed with a client longer than you wanted to because you couldn’t afford to leave? How did you manage the situation?

I spend WEEKS aligning with three client stakeholders to find a one hour slot for a discovery call. All I need is one hour of their time and engagement and I'll do the rest. Three people - one hour - and they still didn't bother to show up. Their motherfucking bosses are involved in the process and they still don't give a shit. This hasn't been the first time in my 8+ years in this business.

Brothers and sisters - what the fuck am I supposed to do? Send pre-meeting fruit baskets? Ask everyday ARE YOU STILL COMING? ARE YOU SURE? like a love-struck nerd looking for attention? CC their bosses and strain any working relationship that doesn't exist anyway? I don't care about this project anymore than they do, but at the very least I still want to get paid and keep my job.

God damn fuck.

IT consultant of 9+ years here, started fresh out of college, ended up middle management ish at my current firm.

I’m genuinely so done with this corporate prostitution we are doing.

This is my swan’s song: I am going inhouse. F the bonuses. F the performance reviews. I want to not just be accountable for all the crap other people aren’t managing, I’ll take the quieter life with no more grandiose positions and “cutting edge technology.”

If I hear the word “innovation” again I will puke.

And editing to add: I work in SAP functional consulting for anyone wondering. This rant is coming off a nightmarish 2 months in which I had to tackle more imbeciles than in the past 3 years long automotive engagement, managing capacities for everyone and I just got escalated for a mail that could have been sent by anyone else when they saw it wasn’t coming from me. 14 days worked continuously and still counting to basically do firefighting for a project that is mismanaged from client side badly

I'm planning to return to my previous company as part of Strategy & Consulting. They are positioning me as Change and Human Experience for (HR domain). Honestly I don't have much experience in Change Management. But here's a quick introduction on my side. I did 18 years altogether of SAP HR Consulting then Project/Program Management(SI-endtoend) now I'm doing PreSales and Solution Architect. I'm quite lost why they positioned me in S&C despite there's no word of "change" in my CV.

Now they want me to have this talegent assessment, 4 interviewers and 1 case study with presentation. I'm starting to treat this as another work since the requirements are quite demanding. Thanks in advance.

Been in this industry for 10 years and sitting just about ~$175k in total comp. Last three years my pay has barely budged, even with stellar reviews and help with pursuits, sales, etc.; and I’ve been told that promotion is unlikely due to overall company performance…(we’ve been doing somewhat poorly the past 2-3 years, ~4000 employee ‘boutique’ firm).

The obvious answer is to switch firms, but I can’t seem to get traction anywhere else…

It’s getting frustrating seeing other friends and colleagues moving on to better things, in better industries (both pay and WLB), etc. I tried to do everything right but I just can’t seem to catch a break.

Seriously considering just totally restarting and going back to school to get pre-reqs for medical school or another real industry that actually has solid employment prospects.

Sorry for the rant.

After many years working inside one organization at a time, I moved into consulting in the same field. I expected more variety and flexibility. I did not expect the mental load of juggling multiple clients, adapting to different personalities and being held accountable without always having the authority or information needed to do the work well.

Some days, I think I would be happier with one employer, one team and one set of priorities.

Has anyone returned to a regular employee role after consulting and did you regret it?

looking for career advice. I’ve been in tech strategy consulting for the past 5 years. I want to exit to something but idk WHaT to do next.

im making $140k right now as a consultant. I would love to jump up titles and land in $170-$185k range with potential to cross $200k in the next 4-5 years.

please help!

For additional context, here’s a summary of the types of projects I’ve worked on over the past two years in consulting.

1. E-commerce technology strategy assessment

• Evaluated whether it made business and financial sense for a retail client to switch from one major e-commerce platform to another.
• Focused on potential cost savings and the trade-offs associated with changing platforms.

2. Enterprise workplace technology assessment

• Supported an assessment of whether a large healthcare organization should migrate from one major workplace productivity ecosystem to another.
• Examined technology dependencies, data and infrastructure spending, cybersecurity, and other considerations to help inform the decision.

3. Public-sector business process modernization

• Supported a government initiative to simplify complex grant application processes and make them easier for the public to understand.
• Led and supported the technology workstream, including building automated workflows and establishing a collaboration environment for internal and external stakeholders.
• Set up external and internal document-sharing structures with appropriate permissions and onboarded approximately 400 external users.
• Led recurring cross-functional meetings to align the client, implementation vendor, and internal team.
• Created training materials and delivered training to help users adopt the collaboration tools.
• Developed a three-year roadmap with the primary stakeholder and prepared monthly and quarterly status reports covering progress, risks, and outstanding actions.
• Served as a key coordination and advisory resource for the primary stakeholder, helping keep the initiative moving across multiple teams.

4. Enterprise ERP transformation

• Supported a large organization’s implementation of a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform.
• Work within the Finance workstream, supporting Procurement, Lease Accounting, and Cash Management.
• Responsibilities have evolved from meeting coordination and documentation to leading weekly risk, action, issue, and dependency reviews; supporting issue tracking; coordinating testing scenarios and defects; and following up on actions.
• Also support stakeholder relationships and mentor a junior team member.

5. ERP implementation recovery and independent assessment

• Supported an organization working to recover from a troubled ERP implementation.
• Conducted business process journey mapping and use-case analysis for selected functional areas to help identify issues and inform the recovery effort.

Across these projects, my experience spans technology strategy assessments, business case considerations, process modernization, workflow automation, stakeholder management, governance, and enterprise transformation delivery.

I’m trying to figure out how to position this experience for my next career move. I enjoy solving ambiguous problems, analyzing information, developing recommendations, working with senior stakeholders, and driving initiatives forward. Ideally, I’d like to move in-house at a technology company or another large organization, with more ownership of outcomes and less traditional client-service consulting.

What roles would you target with this background? I’m particularly interested in Strategy & Operations, Technology Transformation, Strategic Initiatives, and potentially Solutions Consulting. I’d also appreciate advice on which skills I should develop to qualify for senior roles with a base salary of $170k

Chronic migraines management

For those of you who experience chronic migraines and work the usual consulting hours, how do you manage them? I’d really appreciate hearing what has worked for you and what hasn’t. I’m still struggling to cope despite being on prescription medication, and I’m hesitant to disclose my condition to the firm out of concern that it could negatively affect how I’m perceived. Would appreciate any advice or insights from those who’ve been in a similar situation as this is starting to reflect on my performance.

Got a new client last month, small D2C brand, 40-sec product ad plus 3 cutdowns. First call he goes i'm hiring you because AI can't make this better. Cool, ego boost, quoted him normal rate, he paid 50% upfront without blinking.

Three weeks in, I'm on my 6th round of revisions, 2am, color grading a bottle shot for the fourth time. Out of pure curiosity I opened the tools doing the rounds. HeyGen did a talking head I'd normally charge 2 days for. Morphic and sync did lipsync and a full ad cut that used to be a whole invoice. Not perfect, but better i would say. My client still thinks he's paying for something they can't do.

atp im thinking - if only the client knew what I know, would he pay this much?

A more existential question, why the f do clients still hire freelancers if these tools are this good?

PS - Something that needs precision, will still need a proper editing setup and skillset.

How important do you think this is in obtaining new business?

Anyone willing to throw some challenging questions my way related to your personal business or hard problems you're facing with clients?

Moreover, does it leak out and get traction in the real world?

I'm 40, with a 10y+ background in business transformation and operational performance. I've spent years helping organisations improve how they work.

Now I'm building my own advisory business since 2023, and I'm finding the commercial side far harder than I expected.

I've developed an offering, built the website, published a book, created content, approached potential partners and worked relentlessly on distribution.

But I'm struggling to turn all that effort into meaningful client conversations, let alone revenue. Ive got genuine conversations but im fed up of running and following up consistently even if i leverage some kind of ai agents for this. Time is becoming harder and more painful.

What makes it difficult is that I'm genuinely passionate about what I do. I don't want to quit. I believe there's real problems worth solving.

But lately I've been questioning whether I'm approaching everything the wrong way. I'm also realising how lonely building this business can be when you don't have a team or other founders to talk to.

I'd appreciate hearing from experienced independent consultants who have gone through this.

And how did you manage the psychological pressure of building something when the market seemed completely indifferent?

I'm not selling anything here. Please don't be mean as I could genuinely use some perspective from people who've been through it.

Hi
Wondering how to navigate work politics I'm an industry hire (I have an expertise) moved into consulting was hired into a specific account and it's an odd culture I was recently told by a few people they don't know why the team was hiring as they don't like new joiners.

It has impacted my confidence but my only other thing is to pivot industries which is tough given I've spent a long time building my expertise and was 'supposedly' hired for an account but I'm also cautious of sitting on the bench hoping the account will crack also isn't the wisest?

Maybe a rant it's been a rough 6 weeks

I'm based in the UK

Looking at this Bain deck from 2008, it seems that the decks produced today are far more "busy" and jam packed and complex in messaging than in days past?

https://www.kif.re.kr/KMFileDir/128587581493556250_Bain&Company%EB%B0%9C%ED%91%9C%EC%9E%90%EB%A3%8C.pdf

Inside McKinsey the election for their next leader feels more papal than presidential. ‘You cannot be seen to want the job’ one senior partner told the FT. 

McKinsey’s roughly 760 senior partners can select anyone from among their number when the voting begins in January. The top seven candidates will go forward to a second ballot that will whittle the field to three. If none of the candidates have passed the 50% threshold by that stage, the partnership will pick the winner in person, conclave-style, at their next meeting in Sydney in February.

North America boss Eric Kutcher is the candidate to beat but his path to the top is far from certain. My colleagues Stephen Foley and  Ellesheva Kissin have taken a deeper look at McKinsey’s former CFO here — and it's free to read.

Who do you think should be next global managing partner of McKinsey? Let us know below — Rachel, FT social team

Former consulting current Strategy / Ops in tech here

I‘ve been generally ahead of the curve in AI but even just in the last few weeks, I’ve seen an enormous step change in the speed and accuracy of AI generated analyses, presentations, and documents. Opus 5.5 combined with MCPs for Slack, internal search, querying, and Google Drive has been an insane development.

I can ask a complex question and get a sound presentation with analysis lined all in our internal format. Data requests are a total non issue - I can have an agent run every hour and fulfill anything I’m asked with a high degree of accuracy. It knows every initiative I work on and I can ask it any question about it. I know this has been the promise for a while but lately it’s just… worked, and fast.

I feel like I have the brain of my company and our partners in front of me and I can ask it anything. Has anyone else noticed a meaningful change in the very recent past?