| Topic Name: |
McKinsey in decline? |
| Message Name: |
You poor soul... |
| Date Posted: |
12/29/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
EUC has like 50 different screen names on Vault, and spends his days signing up for the Gold option and digging up old posts by other posters. Who's the "loser"? Btw, where exactly did I "lie" before?
In any case, EUC's personal attacks prove my point: many Mck employees and their defenders are insecure, disillusioned people who perpetuate the myth that "the firm" is somehow better than the others and that workering there is somehow sooooo much more special and prestigious. Yet, they offer no PROOF. I'd like to see the statistics on exit oppts, perception of MC firms among c-level execs, etc.
Back to the original topic. The fact is, Mck hires hundreds of new associates a year, and uses most of them to do the same powerpoint BS that associates at the other 5-6 top firms do. It chews them up for 2 years then spits them out. F500 companies and headhunters and MC alumni know this, and don't see 2 years at mck as anything that wonderful, compared to exp at any other top firm (BCG, BAIN, MARAKON, BOOZ WCB, MERCER, DC, PARTHENON).
My entire purpose in posting all this is to help new bschool grads not make the same mistake I did by thinking that 1 or 2 firms were the be-all, end-all. Following the herd might be simple and less costly than doing real research, but the herd is usually wrong (eg, tech bubble).
Here are some excerpts of a great article on the subject for those interested:
"We employ economics to explain how people come to hold faddish beliefs, even when those beliefs are at odds with other beliefs they hold or information they possess.
'Availability cascade' is a term coined by Cass Sunstein and Timur Kuran in an important 1999 Stanford Law Review article. Their work follows distinguished prior work on informational cascades (when people knowing little about an issue take their cue from others) and reputational cascades (involving the rational incentive to go along with the crowd).
The key is to remember that acquiring information is costly and that people look for shortcuts. Imagine a situation in which gifts are being distributed in red and blue boxes. You don't know what the boxes contain but everyone in line is asking for a red box. Therefore, you ask for a red box too (MCK), assuming they must know something you don't and because you want to appear "in the know" too.
This is rational herding.
Put aside the reliance on jargon: That even intelligent people are capable of holding passionate views on matters to which they have given little thought or study is hardly a revelation. A plausible explanation indeed is that such people model their beliefs on the apparent beliefs of others whom they presume to be better informed.
Pierre Lemeiux, an economist at the University of Quebec who has also explored the practical implications of this work, points to cascade theory as reinforcing the classical case for protecting unpopular speech (EUC DOESN'T AGREE W/ THIS) and cultivating the checks and balances of a decentralized state.
The danger of public herding in the media age is obvious but it can be overstated. Informational cascades are inherently fragile -- because they're based on slight information, thus ripe to be reversed when better information becomes available (LIKE THE NEWS REPORT ABOUT MCK DETERIORATING). It's the "reputational cascades" -- in which influential members of the public adopt positions based on fear of unpopularity or career damage -- and the resulting unnatural unanimity among elites that poses the real danger." |
| Message: |
Several clarifications:
"EUC has like 50 different screen names on Vault"
Wrong--I have two screen names. I used "euc" > 95% of the time.
"spends his days signing up for the Gold option and digging up old posts by other posters."
I signed up for the Gold option several months go to prepare for my McK interviews. And "digging up old posts" is called due diligence.
"Btw, where exactly did I "lie" before?"
Oh please wunderkind??. don't let me dig up more things what others have said about you or your own contradiction.
You know, with regard to the "excerpts of a great article"--you did a lot work in compiling these 'excerpts'. I sense that those words probably comforted you greatly during the blue days after getting dinged by McK. I think you are at the last stage of your healing process. Wunderkind, you must not blame your self or McKinsey.
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