I went to a pretty good high school. My friends all went to good colleges, some to the best colleges in the country. Some of those are now on track to land jobs with some of the most competitive pay at some of the most prestigious firms. I am very proud of them, if admittedly a little jealous. I did not go to one of the best institutions, and I will not be receiving a job offer from one of these prestigious companies. This is a disclaimer, an admission, because if you are someone who has achieved more than I have, the subject and argument of this piece will come off as envious and petty.
The Friday before last, the New York Times reported that McKinsey and Co., the world’s most profitable and esteemed consulting firm, had proposed “paying pharmacy companies rebates for [opioid] overdoses”. This is the latest in a long trail of reporting on the ways in which Purdue Pharma and other drug manufacturers clearly and consciously created the opioid epidemic out of thin air. It also follows a trail of reporting on the misdeeds at “The Firm”, including its support of authoritarian governments, its involvement in a massive corruption scandal at the South African state-owned energy company Eskom, and its work with ICE under the Trump administration. What seems clear is that while McKinsey presents itself as a place where the average consultant is working on banal strategic issues like grocery pricing, as former Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg described it, it turns out that a not insignificant portion of the work being done is legally dodgy and ethically abominable. And, as it turns out, even the conventional consultant work that Mayor Pete claimed he was involved in can end up pushing the same ethical boundaries in service of greater profit margins.
It is not a hot take that McKinsey is not alone in its status as a massive multinational corporation that does things that are clearly unethical and damaging. It is also not a hot take that these corporations rarely face any real consequences, armed as they are with an armada of white shoe lawyers that work assiduously to mitigate liability for the company. And as corporate consolidation increases, the winners take more and more, and the barriers to entry in these industries grow taller, they become more profitable. All of those are fairly negative dynamics, and I do not have any interesting legislative or regulatory solutions in mind. Elizabeth Warren does, I believe, but she is far smarter than me and if you are interested in those I would just go listen to what she has to say about these issues. What I do have is a few years of experience watching the smartest people I know nearly kill themselves working to get internships and return offers at places like McKinsey. As long as that remains the case, I do not believe that anything will change.
The reasons for that are threefold. First, as any fan of European football can tell you, when the big guys consistently get the best talent, there is really no chance for the rest to compete. This is just a basic, intuitive mechanism at the heart of private enterprise. When the demand for these jobs among the smartest, most hardworking, and most ambitious people is boundless, and the firms themselves are remarkably good at recruiting and hiring the cream of the crop, they will win. They just will. Second, there is a bubble of elites that form the points on the iron triangles of interest groups, Congressional staff and elected officials, and appointees within the bureaucracy. In D.C., these people party together on weekends and thus scratch each others’ backs on weekdays, despite having jobs that on paper should exist at cross-purposes. I don’t believe the government working to help businesses succeed is necessarily a bad thing, but two points in that triumvirate are supposed to protect us against the negative externalities of large corporations looking to boost their profit margins by setting the rules of the game, and enforcing them when they are broken. Right now, that is not happening, and it seems almost childish to ignore the role that the clubby nature of that world plays in it. And finally — and perhaps most importantly — their brand is a core part of their success. Especially in the case of client-services industries like consulting, being the biggest name is worth an incalculable amount of money. That brand is sustained and boosted when top talent joins and grows within the firm.
This is not a condemnation of those who continue to want to work at places like McKinsey. The exit opportunities are excellent, the pay is fantastic, and the argument that you can’t change these places from the outside has enduring credibility. Not to mention, you get to work on really interesting problems alongside really high-achieving and smart people. Given the chance to work in one of these hallowed halls of power, would I turn it down for moral reasons? I cannot confidently say that I would. As the kids say, how can you hate from outside the club?
What I hope to do is persuade my friends to consider two things:
- What will you do to improve these places’ character from the inside, at the ground level?
- What would it take for you to decline the opportunity to work there, or leave?
The vast majority of the people I talk to who are in position to begin a long and successful career at one of the Big Three or a bulge bracket investment bank do not have answers to these two questions.
We, as a society, need answers about what to do from the outside to increase the accountability of these undemocratic institutions through democratic institutions. But the character of the people who compose a company like McKinsey is also determinative. If you are a person, reading this now, who might end up working there, I do not think it is unfair at this point to ask what you will do to ensure you are not complicit in the destruction of your country and the hurting of your countrymen.
When it comes with the benefits that working for a place like McKinsey does, the motivation to excuse bad behavior, to be part of something potentially toxic, is strong. But we have a broken system here, and we need to pull on all the levers we can to fix it. These firms thrive on the fuel of fresh talent signing on to their project of growth. If it is within your power, and you can bear the potential opportunity cost to your career, this is me (selfishly) asking you to consider paying that cost.
That does not mean joining the peace corps, or becoming an antitrust lawyer instead. I’m not asking you to turn on these places, as it might appear I have. You could work for a startup, for a more responsible large and well-paying firm, for a competitor in the same industry. You could even do these things after you’ve cashed out at the MBB casino.
Because right now, McKinsey is living in the land of no accountability. And while it is a paradise of capitalism for its citizens, for the rest of us it is an imperial power, one we are powerless to stop without the help of those it invites in.
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