I’m currently working at a consulting firm and I’ve also worked with consultants at *several* big-name firms and I can say with confidence that they all have one thing in common: They don’t really give a damn about their consultants.

Consulting companies all seem to suffer from the same idiotic mindset: Consultants are all replaceable instantly with other consultants and any consultant can be instantly adapted to fit a client’s needs (no matter how specific).

That mentality could work if all your consultants have the same skill set (i.e. MCSE generalists), but that won’t stop them from taking that idea and applying it to specialists (say, an Oracle expert). The dark secret of consultancies is that they only grow with the economy (almost 100% organic) so they often try to get around this problem by cutting people that don’t work as much (specialists). This creates a vacuum of knowledge in short time so when a client finally does come around needing an expensive specialist, they’ll try to hire one really fast and then they’ll dump them just as fast as the job is done.

Every time they do that they burn bridges. Sooner or later consultancies run out of local (or even national) candidates and start hiring H1Bs (it never fails, they all do it) who end up being corporate slaves (held hostage–they’ll be sent back to India/wherever if they don;t perform). There’s a HUGE turnover rate.

What happens to all those jaded consultants? They either start their own consultancies–repeating the cycle–or they go to work as full-time employees at regular companies… Who are starting to follow the consultancy model more & more lately (i.e. hiring full-time employees with the expectation that they could be dumped at a moment’s notice to make a quarter look better).

These business practices are unsustainable (and unethical) and it eventually comes around to hurt businesses–and the economy–in the long run. They very well know this, but CEOs, VPs, managers, etc, are hired & fired based only on the performance of the last quarter (or if they’re lucky, the last year) so they never look that far ahead. It is all about TODAY, not TOMORROW!

It hurts the people in the middle class the most. If your business’s only purpose is to increase profits, your business is unnecessary and will eventually be expelled from the bowels of the economy like the excrement that it is. Businesses exist to serve the people, not the other way around.

-Riskable
“I have a license to kill -9″

I wish nothing but the best in your new job. I’m happy that you wrote that little quote on being wise about the things you tell others. Playing it smart at any work environment will always take you far.

Good luck in your first day of work tomorrow!