by ButterflyEffect

McKinsey is an evil and net-negative in this world. It's high up on the "list of things I'd love to see broken up and smashed to pieces".

In the corporate world, the most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from McKinsey, and I’m here to help. The firm’s appearance is known as a harbinger of layoffs (one of most famous representations of consultants in pop culture is “the Bobs” from Office Space). While McKinsey will claim that it never identifies individuals to be cut, its willingness and effectiveness in recommending the axe begins in its roots. In 1935, James O. McKinsey left the firm he started to run a client, the Midwest department store chain Marshall Field. He was tasked with implementing the cost-cutting measures he recommended, resulting in “McKinsey’s purge” of 1,200 employees. In The Firm, McDonald writes, “McKinsey was a true forerunner of the 1980s revolutions in reorganization, downsizing, and rationalization– which are really just layoffs in different guises… McKinsey once argued that it ‘only assesses situations, not people.’” Note the classic obfuscation. What are situations without people? McDonald goes on, “…it may not be too far off the mark to suggest that McKinsey has been the impetus for more layoffs than any other entity in corporate history.”