I have been getting tons of questions and criticism from my friends, colleagues, and juniors about my decision to join McKinsey and company; rejecting offers from top tech companies. I am writing this blog to help myself reflect on my decision, and also to get feedback from others in order to validate/criticize my thought process. While writing this blog, I still am unsure if I made the right decision – I hence request readers to message me their opinion (Opinion on the situation I am in, and whether I made a right decision).
Let me explain the context of this blog – I completed my master’s in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in December 2018. I had interned at McKinsey and Company in Summer 2018 and was pretty happy about the experience I had while working at McKinsey. I got an offer to return full-time at McKinsey, and my positive summer experience made me think that I shouldn't apply to other roles at all!
Given I was mostly free in my final semester, I did give a few interviews. By January 2019, I had offers from most of the top tech companies (SDE, ML/DS, Data engineer roles) and also a few offers for consulting roles.
The offers I had were rather interesting - ML role from Alphabet subsidiary (known for its ML work) and consulting role from AWS were few of the offer I seriously considered. The pay offered by McKinsey was the least of these roles I was considering. And yet, I have decided to join McKinsey and company as Data scientist at the Data Engineering team of McKinsey Digital Labs.
Before I get into explaining my decision, let me describe the role have at McKinsey. McKinsey has recently started giving a push to its digital consulting efforts. My role at McKinsey is of a data consultant - Helping McKinsey clients figure out their problems related to Data science/Engineering. The interesting part about this role is the focus on what McKinsey calls 'impact' - McKinsey is known to be one of the highest costing consulting firms. Every hour a McKinsey consultant spends at client sites costs extremely high, and so the work done has to be extremely effective.
I loved how even during my internship, I was an integral part of deciding system architecture, communicating with CXO level folks at client sites - I felt important right from day one.
I do agree that technology I will get to use at McKinsey will be a step behind that used at top tech companies - tech companies often only 'create' new software, whereas at McKinsey I will often 'consume' software. But even while working at McKinsey, I can keep developing 'core' software, just that it won't be a part of my salary paying job. Yes, McKinsey job won't involve creating new open source frameworks or creating the next Tensorflow. But a clear trend I saw in the tech industry is that such 'innovation' happens only at research positions, not at SDE/ML roles (How-so-ever senior the role be, you are always consuming existing software or adding features, not creating it). And frankly, without a Ph.D. I don't expect a company to trust me with 'creating something new and ground-breaking' for them, and pay me for doing it. I am certain that I will manage to keep an edge in technology even while being with McKinsey due to my association with start-ups that I have been working with for quite some time.
The next interesting part at consulting roles is the variety in work - McKinsey serves clients from every single industry one could think of. I can never get exposure to this variety of business ideas, tech stacks, methodologies by working at a typical tech company for SDE/ML role.
McKinsey employees have perhaps the world’s most diverse set of backgrounds - People from every industry/profession/education imaginable work in McKinsey. If I work in Google (For the sake of argument), I will meet and work with a pool of really talented people with a tech background. But I have grown to realize that there is more to this world than technical abilities. A very simple example I always think of is that while working at Google, talks people have over lunch will mainly be about latest tech-stacks or architecture choices. At McKinsey, I discussed everything starting with tech to the evolution of human psychology, to how everything in this universe is governed by a probabilistic model, to how Antarctic ice cap will decide the next USA president. The range of ideas I heard made me realize how much I could learn if I am surrounded by such a diverse pool of people! At McKinsey, I did see people with crazy thoughts, but I never felt that any of their talks were rubbish. Every single person had the ability to do what he/she claimed! As one of McKinsey seniors I talked with pointed out - McKinsey is a place where you might meet a person who claims he plans to head Google one day, and the person might do it. I won't even start with how McKinsey is a CXO factory - McKinsey alumni have become CEOs and COOs at numerous top companies (Heard of Sundar Pichai?). Working with such people is certainly an experience I don't want to miss.
List of
Notable McKinsey Alumini
Another awesome aspect about McKinsey - Dynamic teams. I don't have a 'manager’. Teams are constructed per project/client on demand. McKinsey follows a horizontal management system. For every new client engagement, I will potentially meet new colleagues (from within McKinsey)!
Found this really funny video about interaction of clients with consultants. I will be one of the 'experts'.
I think that the skills and experience I can get working at a core tech firm will be limited (mainly technical). I think I can develop these skills by having indirect connect with the tech world (Through collaborations, open-source work, hackathons and working with start-ups). The skills I hope to develop in next few years are mainly non-technical ones.
Working at a top tech company is an obvious safe choice for most sane people. McKinsey even has an 'Up or out' policy - Work good enough to get promoted within a certain time or leave the firm. Compared to such aggressive policy at McKinsey, tech companies offer more stability (More money, less travel, fewer worries about performance). But, I feel that working as a developer at Google won't take me closer to my aim as much as working at McKinsey will. Those who know me well can tell you how much I hate doing a 'job'. Call me crazy, but if I still am doing a job at the age of 30-35, I will consider myself a failure. I intend to own my work and career - something I was pretty open about while interviewing at McKinsey (And they actually supported this idea!).
I think that McKinsey isn't the final destination, but a stepping stone. At the age of 23, I am not risking a lot by rejecting the highest paying offer. The decision of getting into consulting can always be changed at any point in time - I am certain I can get all my tech offers again 1 year later!
During my interactions with employees at top tech companies, I often heard complaints related to difficulty in getting promotions, monotonous nature of the job, lack of decision-making powers, and lack of opportunity to stand out in the crowd of thousands of techies. Compared to that, McKinsey employees complained mainly about hectic lifestyle (Due to constant traveling) and comparatively longer working hours. No McKinsey employee ever said that there wasn’t an opportunity to do what one wanted to do.
"Won't being away from bay area disconnect you from tech world?" - No! McKinsey has an office in the Bay area (I can move to California some time down the line). I plan to be in California frequentyl for hackathons, conferences and events!
Also, my role in McKinsey is 'Data scientist' - To some extent, I feel it's better than working in the bay area tech industry. I get to work on a wide variety of projects compared to working in a tech company (One project, one team - Meh). McKinsey pay is slightly less than what typical SDE L4-5 roles pay in SF/Bay area. However, I think the resultant money in hand is higher than the Bay area counterparts as I spend literally nothing while working at Mckinsey (Perks! Perks!) and the rent I pay living in NYC is less than half for double the studio size compared to California rent.
View from my apartment!
1500$ pm gets you a large studio (At least 600 sqft) in NYC suburbs; or a ‘liveable’ apartment in Manhattan (if you take efforts to search). Best luck getting anything in California at 1500$ (Unless you are into sharing an apartment).
Are my views biased? – While deciding between my job offers, I wrote down pros and cons for joining each of the companies I was considering. This blog is the summary of a few of such points I wrote down back then. These reasons I am presenting here are concerning my aims, goals, and understanding of what I want my career to be. I am sure they can and will appear to be entirely wrong for many. I am looking forward to hearing from those who disagree with my decision! The decision I am making right now could be completely wrong. However, looking at people around me (3-4 years elder to me) equally confused and getting similar job offers as me, I think I can afford to take some risk.
If things don't work out, I can always do an MBA 2 years later :P
