<p>I always hear about the insane hours that Ibankers put in. I'm attracted by the money, but do not really find the job that interesting and absolutely hate the hours. Management Consulting on the other hand looks very interesting. What is it exactly that they do and what kind of hours do they work?</p>
<p>70-80 hours. And you will be traveling to THE worst places. Think factories in the middle.of.no.where, Idaho. (Sorry to the people of Idaho). </p>
<p>Here's some more info:</p>
<p>Landing a job with a top strategy firm is really competitive, possibly moreso than ibanking because the top strategy firms often recruit at a smaller number of top schools.</p>
<p>Management consulting also has pretty insane hours. On top of that, there's an extensive amount of traveling. Four days a week away from home is not uncommon.</p>
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And you will be traveling to THE worst places. Think factories in the middle.of.no.where, Idaho. (Sorry to the people of Idaho).
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<p>Well, I think that's a bit of a slanted perspective. As a management consultant, you will be sent to a variety of places, and while some of them aren't exactly great, I think it's far more likely to that you would be sent to such places as a permanent employee. Not only that, but as a consultant, you may be sent to some boring locations, but at least you know you will get to leave once the job is done. As a permanent employee at a company, you may be sent to a bad location and expected to be there for YEARS. For example, I know people at Amazon who ended up getting sent to extremely boring rural places, because that's where Amazon has a lot of its distribution centers. As a consultant with Amazon, you may also get sent to those places, but you're not going to be there for very long. </p>
<p>The point is that just because you're not a management consultant doesn't mean that you won't get sent to locations you don't want to be in. What happens if your company says they're moving your job to some remote location, and if you want to keep your job, you have to move to that location? What if your company says that if you want to advance, you have to develop diverse managerial experience, which means you have to prove you can run operations in various locations, including some not-so-good locations? General Electric is known for doing this, and so are many other companies. How is that any different from management consulting?</p>
<h1>of people in profession: 274,000</h1>
<p>Average hours per week: 60
Average starting salary: $50,000
Average salary after 5 years: $65,000
Average salary after 10 to 15 years: $86,800</p>
<p>I-Banking sounds alot better.</p>
<p>Moving permanently to a particular location is not as bad as traveling around a lot, which is what management consultants have to do. It's one thing to move to Idaho (for example) for a few years. It's much more grueling to have to travel all over the world all the time, being away from your family for four days a week. Being on the road all the time is much more stressful than working in a rural area.</p>
<p>Tpeck, you're taking the entire field of consulting into account. Management & Strategy Consulting is much more lucrative because of the nature of the contracts they get, and the fact that the big 3: McKinsey, Bain, and Boston are private companies allow for huge bonuses if you get into profit sharing.</p>
<p>Ohhh, tell me more about M & S Consulting then. Can they earn as much as I-Bankers?</p>
<p>Consulting: Salaries Starting salaries in consulting positions with a bachelor's degree after bonus (analyst position) range from $40,000 to $80,000. Starting salaries with an MBA degree range after bonus (associate position) range from $70,000 to $160,000. These salaries vary with firms and with the region of the country you are in.
Research Associate (No Bachelors): $25,000-60,000
First Year Analyst (bachelors degree): $40,000-80,000 (plus a bonus of $5,000-$10,000)
Second Year Analyst: (bachelors degree): $50,000-100,000 (plus a bonus of $5,000-20,000)
Management Consultant (MBA): $70,000 - 160,000
Senior Consultant (MBA + 2-5 years): $200,000
Junior Partner (MBA/Ph.D + 5 years or more): $300,000
Senior Partner (MBA/Ph.D + 5-20 years): $500,000 (bonus: up to $2,000,000)</p>
<p>And true Sakky, you will only be traveling for brief amounts of time, rather being relocated for years. But, I think some people dont want to have to travel so often. I too think its pretty annoying to be riding planes around all the time, however, I'm sure there are people that are really interested in seeing different parts of the country and that this type of work would be ideal.</p>
<p>usually at the big 3 (McKinsey, Bain, and BCG) you start from college as an associate consultant (some have another name for it) and work for 2-3 years...making about 80k or so with bonuses. Then if you're good they pay for your MBA and hire back as a consultant for 3 years (making with bonuses like 150k). Then if you're good you get promoted to Manager for another few years making 200-400k depending on performance. Then if you're good you get promoted to Partner making over a million a year (usually) and many times much more than that. However, mngt consulting is a very up or out field so if you're not the best or one of the best at the end of every stage you usually are done with consulting. Many people that I know however that have left consulting (either at the consultant or manager level) have just gone to different firms and become their VP/SVP/EVP or Strategy and Corporate Planning and they make upwards of 400k depending on the size of the company. </p>
<p>Plus mngt consulting is so much more interesting that M&A ibanking. In ibanking all you do is sit at a cube for 15+ hours a day making pitch books and more boring stuff. In mngt consulting you and your team are assigned to a case...you then go and meet with the top mngt (CEO, CFO, etc.) at the firm that you are reviewing. You are presented a problem (i.e. the industry as a whole has been growing yet why are we experiencing a diminishing gross margin). Then you work either from your office or on-site with your team to find a solution to the problem. </p>
<p>IMO, mngt consulting gives you a much broader set of tools that will be more helpful than only learning one skill really well at an ibank.</p>
<p>btw different firms call positions different names at Bain it's:
-Associate Consultant
-Consultant
-Manager
-Partner</p>
<p>others call them analysts, associates, consultant, sr consultant, jr partner, sr partner, etc.</p>
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Moving permanently to a particular location is not as bad as traveling around a lot, which is what management consultants have to do. It's one thing to move to Idaho (for example) for a few years. It's much more grueling to have to travel all over the world all the time, being away from your family for four days a week. Being on the road all the time is much more stressful than working in a rural area.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think that really depends on the location. There are certain parts of the world that I REALLY don't want to have to work in. I'm sure that's true of everybody. If you're a management consultant that's sent to such a location, you know you're not going to be there for that long. However, if you're a permanent employee at Amazon and are ordered to go to the new Amazon distribution warehouse in Coffeyville, Kansas (for example), and if you really don't like Kansas (I have nothing against Kansas, I'm just using it as an example), then you got a very big problem on your hands. You can quit, but that's the end of your career at Amazon, or you can grin and bear it, but that means being stuck in a place you really don't like for potentially years on end. I would think that that's FAR more stressful than having to travel all the time. </p>
<p>I do agree that some people don't want to have to travel so often, and that means that MC is not for them. But that also means that lots of high-flying jobs are not for them. A great many high-flying jobs in any field require extensive travel. Let's face it. If you're not willing to travel, that's probably going to be a detriment to your career. </p>
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Can they earn as much as I-Bankers
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<p>No, usually not. If all you care about is money, then do IB. </p>
<p>However, management consulting work tends to be less work (still a lot of work, but less than IB), and also tends to be more interesting and varied.</p>
<p>Which of these two fields is easier to "break into", so to speak, aka get hired by top firms? And in which one is it easier to rise the ranks? Management consulting seems to be more popular than i-banking among MBA's. Why is that the case, if the hours are almost as bad, the work is almost as grueling, and the pay is not as good? Besides the fact that consulting is more interesting and varied, what other advantages does it have to i-banking (is it less competitive)?</p>
<p>Well the difficulty of breaking into either one depends on a lot of factors. For instance, if you are specifically interested in management consulting then there are basically only 3 firms that are incredibly prestigious. Whereas in I-Banking there are at least 6-7 firms that are, for the most part, equal in terms of prestige. So you have a similar amount of people competing for half the amount of firms in management consulting as there is in I-banking. However, once you get out of those 3 firms it is considerably easier to get into a consulting firm than an i-bank. </p>
<p>Many people choose consulting because while i-banking offers a lot of exit opportunities later in life they are mostly finance related, whereas consulting can basically be catapulted into any industry imaginable (usually the one that you consult in though). Many consultants go from McKinsey, Bain, and BCG to a Fortune 500 company as the CEO because they are experts in the business' target industry.</p>
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Management consulting seems to be more popular than i-banking among MBA's. Why is that the case, if the hours are almost as bad, the work is almost as grueling, and the pay is not as good?
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<p>Well, first of all, there is a big difference between working 70 hours a week and working 90 hours a week. It may not seem like much if you've never done it, but that extra 20 hours a week is a real killer. You can actually have a semi-life as a consultant, something that is basically impossible as a banker.</p>
<p>And I think Uc_Benz really hit it on the head - management consulting is a more flexible career path than is banking. A stint in management consulting is more 'portable' than a stint in banking. If you go down the banking route, you have basically consigned your future career to something related to finance. Not so in consulting, where your future options tend to be significantly wider. </p>
<p>In fact, lots of MBA students like consulting because they basically see it as an extension of MBA school, except they're getting paid. The projects are interesting and diverse, and the people you work with are diverse. Hence, many MBA students see consulting as basically their version of a "post-doc".</p>
<p>I see. Is it common for i-bankers to leave the field after a few years? I've heard of a high burnout rate due to the grueling hours.</p>
<p>some switch to hedge funds.</p>
<p>I absolutely love traveling. However, if I start a family 4 days a week might be pretty grueling. None the less I love traveling and it would be awesome if it were only say 2 days a week. Management Consulting does look to be what I am interested, and I love the fact that you can catapult a career out of management consulting. I may not last too long in MC, but what I really want to end up doing is being a CEO or whatnot of a fortune 500 company.</p>
<p>The fact is, very few people last very long in either IB or MC. Not only that, but a lot of people go in to those fields don't WANT to last very long. A common refrain in B-school is "I'd like to work for McKinsey, but only for a couple of years", or "I'd like to get into investment banking, do that for a few years, then move onto what I really want to do." Basically, a lot of people simply see a couple of years at MC or IB as a way to 'punch their ticket', so that they can have it on their resume for later use. I suppose it's a way for them to prove that not only did they get their MBA's, but they were also one of the better students coming out of the MBA program, because those MBA students who get IB or MC offers tend to be the better students.</p>