Will Bunch, regular opinion writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, excoriates McKinsey in this column.
He writes:
In the last few years, McKinsey & Co.’s image as a go-to high-paying job option for the Ivy League’s best and brightest has morphed into something uniquely dark and sinister, as outstanding journalism from the New York Times and others has shed a light on arguably the world’s most secretive company, which never reveals its client list.
Nonetheless, the various scandals swirling around McKinsey have largely registered under the radar screen before last week, when journalists from ProPublica, publishing in the Times, exposed McKinsey’s work on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Two important things to note: a) it was the administration of Barack Obama that hired McKinsey for this task in 2015 and b) ICE officials under the Trump administration, justifiably pilloried for their cruel treatment of migrants, actually thought some of McKinsey’s ideas were inhumane.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Two paths diverged in a wood and the McKinsey “Slimeball” Consultants took the wrong one because it led to a pot of gold covered in toxic mold.
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The McKinsey firm embodies the worst of corporate slime. Acquiring money is ALL that matters.
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For 92 years, the firm has held fast to the dictum of never disclosing names of clients or the advice it gives…. the Massachusetts attorney general had accused McKinsey of fanning the flames of the opioid epidemic. In legal papers, the attorney general alleged that McKinsey had instructed the maker of a powerful opioid on how to “turbocharge sales” of the drug, how to counter efforts by drug enforcement agents to reduce opioid use and how to “counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed” on the drug…
Just one week after the United Nations denounced the mass detention of thousands of ethnic Uighurs in a vast archipelago of indoctrination camps, McKinsey chose to quietly hold its annual corporate retreat nearby. We not only reported on that retreat, in Kashgar, China, we also published pictures of it, including one that showed red carpets winding through the desert. Under the headline “How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments,” we also documented the firm’s work in Russia, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. McKinsey’s work in these countries is noteworthy because it comes at a time when democracies around the world are under attack.
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When the small army of pimply, young consultant lackeys shows up at your company or other institution with their clipboards and their predetermined, loaded questions to interview all the managers, know that the proverbial excrement is about to hit the fan. It’s almost always a rigged game, from the start. The consulting work will typically have two primary functions: a) to tell the C-level management what they have already to decided to do and provide rationales for that incredibly unpalatable course, and b) to root around for other work for the consulting firm. The pink slips will soon follow.
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What!?!?! You desiccated all the older workers and fed them to new hires? Well, this wasn’t our plan initially, but we studied this, and that’s what the consulting firm recommended. Older workers tend to be bulkier and to require larger cubicles.
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Dead on! They come in, wet behind the ears,. and ask everyone what they are doing and pretend they care about the answers.
Are treated better than the veterans they are there to scrutinize in order to make the operation better. Very bad for morale of those who are seen as obstacles to improvement, efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, profit,…
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I always found talking to these pompous, clueless children revolting. The combination of arrogance and ignorance is toxic.
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Thank you, Diane, for linking to this OUTSTANDING article by Mr. Bunch. One of the best (and most harrowing) pieces I’ve read in a long, long time!
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I’m always fascinated by the comment threads. This one (53 comments) shows a full-throated rejection; they sound like “conservative” [Trump-Rep] trolls who detest Bunch & check him out regularly to disagree on no other basis than, he sounds liberal/ anti-corporate to them. This puts the commenters – for this article – in the ludicrous position of lauding mgt consulting firms on general principle. Anyone w/a fiscally conservative bone in his body would look skeptically at $’s added to cost by pencil-pushers w/o tech experience in the field. As my engrg-corp husband remarked, “the problem w/ mgt consulting firms is, all they do is bill hours.”
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Our Revolution South Benders are coming down really hard on Mayor Pete (a # of you probably get their e-mails). After Warren had been badgering him to “come clean” about his time w/McKinsey, he did make some public statements about his own work, &, also, asked to be released from his NDA (so, good for him in that respect).
When looking all of this up, a funny article heading/description also popped up, claiming that Buttigieg obtained all of his “poise” from his time spent at McKinsey.
As I mentioned in another post, reading that he’s the purported front-runner in Iowa, I think his the pick of the Tom Perez DNC right now.
(Still sore about Keith Ellison’s losing that Chairmanship…)
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Buttigieg actually says that he himself can not reveal the list of clients that he worked for because of a nondisclosure agreement.
He has asked McKinsey to reveal the list.
But Bunch describes McKinsey as “the world’s most secretive company, which never reveals its client list.”
So what is the chance that McKinsey is going to do what Buttigieg has asked?
One has to at least entertain the possibility that Buttigieg knows what the outcome of such a request will be (no dice), which would make his asking a bit less admirable. Just a bit.
Forgive me for being skeptical (if not cynical) but this is a pretty common game that politicians play to avoid doing something they don’t want to do while making it appear that the decision is not theirs to make.
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Yep, right you are, SDP. Not easy to get out of an NDA (but, I guess, looks good if one said one tried to!).
Have to rePete: methinks he’s the anointed one.
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Well, you were wrong – it worked. Buttigieg has permission to reveal the list from McKinsey.
I believe Buttigieg needs experience beyond the mayor of South Bend to be president, but let us stop continuing to distort his record because of his centrist positions.
Besides those three years, he has dedicated his whole life to service, including the military. His education is impeccable. He is exactly the kind of person we should be encouraging to be in office.
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Should Mayor Pete get elected will he give McKinsey open-ended consulting contract on how to fix Washington? Rachel, ask him that.
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I was wrong to assume that McKinsey would probably not release the comment list and that Buttigieg might be relying on that to avoid the fallout, but I would note that there are still McKinsey restrictions in place on what Buttigieg is allowed to say beyond the client list itself (restrictions which are nebulous enough to perhaps preclude him from saying almost anything at all) and a list without details about what Buttigieg did may not actually be very informative, at any rate.
The upshot is a list is better than no list but maybe not by much.
We shall see. The proof is in the information he relesses.
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Didn’t David Coleman, the architect of Common Core, come from McKinsey?
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Yes, David Coleman worked at McKinsey.
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All this time, I thought Coleman had worked at McDonalds.
I was sure that’s where he got the idea for the Big MaCore (TM)
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And MaClose Reading (TM)
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NY Teacher:
You’re right–SDP & I were wrong, it appears. That having been said,
I don’t think anyone here has been “distorting his positions.” I think we are trying to figure out he who really is, as we pretty much always do w/candidates on this blog. It’s a “site to discuss better education for all,” so, bottom line, what we’re looking at, is, he really in favor of a “better education for all?” Unless I’m distorting his education platform (as reported here)&, I have to say, I don’t think so. & I, personally, really don’t care if his “education is impeccable.” We’ve been down that road before…Hahvahd, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford. Which past presidents boasted that “impeccable education,” then ruined public education for other people’s children (yes, we can all name a few!)?
Bottom line, as he’s surged in the polls (particularly in Iowa) I continue to believe that he’s the new darling replacing Joe Biden (who, it appears to me, is toast–hasn’t even been endorsed by He Who Walks on Water {but stuck the knife into the back of public education, then twisted it time & again})…he’s not going to do anything to shake up the status quo; he won’t upset his corporate backers. Just. Not. Buying. It.
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Also: look back at Diane’s post on December 7th, “Valerie Strauss Reviews Pete Buttigieg’s Education Plan” and the comments. Finally, will be interested in hearing what he has to say at the MSNBC Education Forum this Saturday, Dec. 14th.
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