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Seems to me the $16k was BCG concerned because this person was a vulnerable demographic and they didn't want to be sued, not being spoken poorly of. I've never heard of something like that either way.

I'm a data scientist consultant (not at BCG), and while some things may be true, there's also the flip side, where some junior analyst with a fancy degree thinks they're the bees knees when in fact they don't know anything at all.

"I'm not good at excel" is kind of a red flag for a variety of other incompetencies. This article features multiple instances of him saying he wasn't as competent as he was marketed but also more competent than others on the team. I would guess the other side of the story was very different. Name dropping MIT a dozen times is a similar red flag.




A conditional severance package is pretty standard stuff in a contract for white collar employees. I work at a startup, and if I'm terminated involuntarily, my company will pay me a few months' salary. But if I violate the non-disparagement or non-compete clauses I signed, I have to pay back the severance.

I also think the MIT references are reasonable because the article was published in the MIT student newspaper.

Besides that, I agree that the story by itself isn't really enough to draw any conclusions against MBB. The author comes across as unjustifiably entitled.


I admit I didn't read it carefully enough to notice he was let go. I thought it was voluntary.

I'd wonder how much that influenced his opinion retroactively haha.


Yup. This reads a bit like new grad in over their head.

“I was the most senior consultant on the case proposal”. Unless this guy was selling the work to the customer (normally what partners do), no he wasn’t the most senior. He was the new consultant in the back doing the grunt work.

And the “sit back and shut up” is actually good advice for someone who has never done consulting before. The client knows you’re a 20-something junior. They aren’t hiring you, they are hiring your partner who has 10+ years of experience.


People are down voting you but I had the same take in regards to the red flags. In particular -- > "him saying he wasn't as competent as he was marketed but also more competent than others on the team"


The article was written in MIT’s student newspaper… given that, I wouldn’t really call it “name dropping”


>"I'm not good at excel" is kind of a red flag for a variety of other incompetencies.

Could you please explain why you think that way?


I designed and implemented a very critical algorithm at work, advancing the state of the art for cluster schedulers.

I had to ask my coworker for help putting together a simple before/after bar chart for its perf gains in excel.

He couldn't believe it.


The world works in Excel. It's not usually the best tool for any one particular job, but it does do most jobs, and it is everywhere.


I wouldn't generalize this outside of the consulting world. But many junior consultants who say they aren't good at excel just haven't done any sort of quantitative analysis and they wouldn't know where to start.


I’d say claiming you are good at excel is a bigger red flag. Excel is a sprawling development environment with sprawling use cases.

It’s like saying “I’m good at computer keyboards”.


Claiming you're good at excel is a red flag since it's a fundamental tool for the profession.

Claiming you're not good at excel is a red flag since it's a fundamental tool for the profession.


No one is good with Excel. Only Socrates is, and he knows he isn't good with Excel.


This comment establishes its green flag of credibility by not referring to the unmentionable software by name.


The Scottish spreadsheet!


Kind of like resumes that list "GitHub" as a skill.




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