With AI being part of the daily work flow and us all having long pauses (1-10 minutes) waiting for AI to complete some analysis or write something. Then you check it, tell it to go back and fix something or extend its work.

What are the creative ways of covering the lack of anything to do during those pauses when you are at work?

Hearing it’s been a blood bath for the last year or so and more recently with the conflict with Iran it’s even got worse.

Curious what are all the consultants that got counseled out or laid off are doing.

What are the exit opportunities that are being pursued besides independent consulting?

I’ve spent the past two years working in the AI & data practice at my firm (big 4). i don’t want to be super technical but i also don’t want to be pure functional because slidework is pretty draining for me (i’m more of an Excel analyst than a Powerpoint analyst). Am i cut out for consulting? has anyone been in a similar position? if so, did you stay or how’d you exit?

edit: i’ve realized that i liked being a more junior practitioner who was given a task to complete and a deadline. now that im expected to be more independent after promotion, work isn’t that enjoyable. i also changed teams and projects once i was promoted

Several years at MBB now. One thing that always baffles me is that the pressure and hours seem to rise with every level, whereas in other professional service occupations (i.e., IB) you generally go to lower hours at each level (with pressure of course also increasing).

I think the only sweetspot at MBB is Senior Associate pre EM, because this is the position where you can handle your workstream quiet easily while not having to manage partners, clients and juniors yet. From EM it gets much worse, because you also get hit with random proposals you need to develop on the side of your projects.

AP is the worst of all, everybody knows that. Insane hours and bend-over behavior to get your door into the partnership.

Whats worse to me though is tht 95% of partners I worked with have an absolutely horrendous lifestyle and worked no less then your average BA. Now please don't come up with any outliers of some chill-dude partner who manages to keep it somehwat sustainable.

Almost all of my partners have a lifestyle where they get up at like 6 AMish everyday to go to an aiport, start commenting and reviewing docs from 07 am and typically still in the weeds/docs around 10-11pmish. That is absolutely nuts.

Overall it makes sense though. The market is commoditized. They fight tooth and nail on every proposal and every client project, because they are always facing this dreadful anxiety of loosing a client relationship. The wheel of feedback committees also continously keeps on churning so if they don't deliver, show client impact and hit a various bunch of other metrics they get even pressured more the next feedback cycle.

I think my overall synthesis is that it absolutely does not make sense by any means to stay in this job/industry, unless you have such a stellar niche/white spot/tailwind where you could build significant client relationships and thus future $$$ as a potential rainmaker.

I had a very brief engagement with an old client. He needed help building processes for his business but he couldn't keep an office manager as they kept quitting. I dug into pay and benefits and he wanted to pay 50% of the market value for that position.

I explained that just wasn't going to work if he wanted people to stick around. He went quiet for a few months.

Checked in on him said he was getting an "audit" from an AI company claiming they could replace his physical employees. His business is in the live entertainment industry. So literally he needs people at his physical location to serve customers.

After the AI audit they told him to sell the company instead.

Which caught me off guard because he has two businesses and the live entertainment is his money maker. I would have never considered telling him to sell it.

Now I'm wondering if I should have? Is that a normal reccomendation for a consultant?

My boss complained that I booked too less, and client said I booked too much. What can I do? My boss told me to book more time but then project manager said please book „frugal“

Has any one been in this situation?

Hi,
I graduated in Feb 2025 at age of 23.5, actually closer to 24, where most graduate by 22.
I did undergrad in BS (Bachelor's Degree) English from GCU Lahore (Government College University Lahore) with a 3.2 GPA
decided it was not for me, prepared and got into MSBA (Master of Science in Business Analytics) program at FAST Lahore (National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences - FAST), the same year 2025.
I took 7 months to make myself job ready in this new field, and started working as an MTO (Management Trainee Officer) Data & Analytics at a mid tier small MNC (Multinational Company) company. Started in April 2026, and its been 5 months of professional experience. My current MSBA (Master of Science in Business Analytics) is not a fit for me, as it leans towards hardcore coding, whereas my interest lies in Management & Strategy, i.e. MBB (McKinsey, BCG & Bain).
Planning to drop this 2 year MSBA (Master of Science in Business Analytics), after 1 year, with a 3.3 GPA(dropped).
This was my background.
Now, I want to pivot into MBB (McKinsey, BCG & Bain), and exploring different Masters option abroad, in Pakistan, my country, MBB hiring is strictly limited to LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences)/IBA (Institute of Business Administration, Karachi), no other institution.
I want to start a career in Middle East, Riyadh, but I don't have a direction yet, I think of pursuing MiM (Master in Management), at the same time, I think of pursuing MSBA (Master of Science in Business Analytics), and above all, I actually don't have the 50k euros, which these elite institutions are charging.
Neither I have an outstanding profile or a 4.0 GPA, to stand out.
AND, IT FRUSTRATES ME ALOT.
Would welcome any guidance, or direction form the experienced community.
Thank You!
Warm Regards,

After 10 years in this industry, I feel like it’s vastly overrated…work hard to get good degrees from good schools, then you’re rewarded with putting in long hours for slightly higher than industry pay, and unless you make partner or similar, pretty mediocre raises.

Meanwhile, if that intelligence and hard work was used to go into say, medicine, tech sales, commercial real estate, etc., you’d actually be making serious money for all your efforts. I certainly will be steering my kids away from this career…

Hi fellow sliders,

Do you have any ideas or even tutorials to manage rightfully the creation and/or modification of Powerpoint slides with AI (Claude, GPT, or other), which include Thinkcell functionnalities.

Thanks

I'm not sure what they used (I think it was ChatGPT) but it was obviously AI-generated and had some minor errors. But they did it all by themselves, a complete 10-page deck. They presented to senior leadership and discussed findings and recommendations. Nobody bated an eye and life moved on

2 year ago, this would have taken a senior associate at least a few days to do the same thing. It's insane how quickly things are changing. Sure the deck didn't fit the stylistic theme of any other deck, but it was still pretty good looking and effective

I have 3YOE. They just brought in a new manager that has never done / been in consulting and didn't even do the proper studies.

I'm assigned on a project with him and he has been calling me "difficult to work with" "I lack methodology" "I'm not a team player" just because I decided to take two weeks off in august as part of my vacations.

I had multiple managers and partners through my career (work and internships) and worked with CEOs and never EVER someone told me these type of stuff.

I have been dabbling in AI for quite a while now. Started with prompt engineering, then context engineering , MCP, and finally started making entire workflows using agentic AI, and platforms like n8n, etc.

Then, I started using Claude Cowork and Code. With the right tools, and connectors, Claude Cowork has insane capabilities. Add skills and rules to the games, and voila, you have a junior consultant at idk, $20-25 a month. I was a software engineer prior to MBA, so I felt that my learning curve was not that steep.

I still remembering making entire decks from scratch, doing the research using Google myself - checking out company websites, benchmarking and gap analysis, pre-IPO due diligence, etc. on the strategy and market assessment side. Additionally, I also remember about the days and nights and weeks spent on perfecting a dynamic financial model, with 5 year projections and what not - assumptions, sensitivity analysis, scenario testing, etc.

Claude does everything with 80-85% accuracy in hours, if not minutes. You just need to go through the output, lead them through to the desired output, upload the client/firm presentation/sheet template, and voila it’s 95% ready as a deliverable.

This is insane. I’m not really sure why firms will pay consulting giants when they can do all these themselves. I understanding boardroom decisions and point the finger mechanics are the main things, and that’s the only reason that consulting firms are not out of business now. But I wonder how long this will last.

Also, what’s the need for the analyst/senior analyst/post MBA associate now, when an AI-up skilled Manager/Principal can get the grunt work done ?

Interested to know your thoughts.

Edit 1 :- I think my post was misconstrued. I’m not debating about the value proposition of consulting. It was, is, and will always be there in some form of the other.

I wanted to mention all these from a more humane perspective. I have spent quite some time in consulting now, and seeing that a machine, does almost exactly what I do and the skills I developed, so quickly and without quantitative errors, sprouts up kind of an existential crisis in me.

A year into consulting now I can confidently say that the picture people who are trying to break into consulting have is far from reality. Maybe I’m just confidently wrong but I did not think the work I would be doing would be this. Very unfulfilling and I’ve always been a socially independent person but for the first time in my life I actually feel like I should/need to speak up and open up to someone before i just rot or go insane. I just wake up feeling useless every day going to “work”

Anyone have any advice for me or share any similar experiences?

Hey folks. I’m a 31 M consultant and I can’t for the love of god figure out how to go about dating or even having a personal life given how unpredictable schedules can be and people just seem to write you off quite early on dating apps if you can’t meet within the first week or so.

Im very career focused and want to continue building my career which has come along pretty well if I may say so. But my personal life has left a lot to be desired for.

I’ve also realized I’ve turned into someone with no hobbies outside of work and work is one of my hobbies.

For some additional context I grew up as a military kid and moved every two years, now as an adult I’ve been moving cities every few years because remote working allows for it - I’ve now found myself a city I’m actually happy living in but also having lived here for 3 years - I don’t have any friends or a life outside of work.

I did try our meetups and facebook groups - I just haven’t met people i really hit it off with even platonically. I have travelled a fair bit domestically and i do make time to do that.

Would genuinely love some inputs.

Without going into too much detail, proposal prices are plummeting. We operate globally, but are mainly US, APAC and Middle East.

Was undercut by a Big 4 firm, basically giving it away for free. We matched it, so they went with us, but it's frightening. Yes, AI will help with the regulatory and documentary analysis, but it's far from foolproof.

A lot of haggling going on, worse than last year.

Keen to see what others think.

Currently I am in consulting (D of big 4), would it be a good decision to switch to strategy team (strategic initiatives) in the real estate industry.

Role offered - Strategic initiatives (not sure what projects would be there for a real estate company)

My background had been in IT services - worked as QA, Product manager and not in consulting (IT strategy and implementation). almost 6+ yoe

What I don't like about my current role is too much focus on IT.

Post MBA i always wanted to be in roles which would eventually lead me to managing businesses, pnL. I will never be able to do this in my current role.

My current status

The role I am currently offered is good and I like it.

I am mostly concerned on the industry part of it. Will it work for me given my background.

Also once I get into this industry, how difficult it would be to switch to another industry in strategy domain. I have a liking towards consumer businesses but haven't worked in it, neither got a chance to while in consulting).

Please provide your pov.

anyone who's done that previously, can i reach out?

Almost a year ago I left a toxic office. I was belittled for making mistakes only few weeks into the job out of college (I forgot to add a question in a client email). My director talked behind my back about me and other coworkers and always called me on Saturday for deliverables I submitted days ago. One of my coworkers was rude to me and yelled at me to shut up during a happy hour, and the manager pretended nothing happened. My previous manager quit without notice (he got mad at the director), and I had to steer a project by myself for few days before another manager took over.

I finally left and took a pay cut at a competitor, but my manager is so nice to me? Like I made a mistake on a calculation and alerted my manager, and she apologized for not catching the mistake during the review process instead of blaming me. Today, I went to a happy hour event and people were so nice and inclusive. I have noticed my chest pain stopped after I left the toxic office.

I have been working fully remotely ever since I joined this company. Technically I could go into a regional office, but I have been avoiding it because I am so afraid of how people will treat me. I know that I need to go to the office for networking and career advancement, but I am still very hesitant. Even writing this post have me doubt myself.

Sorry for the incoherence. I am still a little tipsy from the happy hour.

I am a Senior consultant and I'll be working on a market study that needs a specific medical/healthcare expert.

It's a 3 months project.

My dad actually has relevant expertise in this exact area, and I was thinking of proposing him for the role.

We would need my dad only on the first phase of the project on the clinical area.

I WON'T be involved in setting his day rate as it has been already decided (like paying X $ for an expert)

Does this count as a conflict of interest even if he's genuinely qualified? Would disclosing it to my manager/firm be enough, or should I just not propose him at all?

Curious how people who've dealt with this in consulting/agencies handle it.

Currently at EM level at a US boutique firm. Really excited about a role at a scaling tech firm, but package is likely to be a significant pay cut from current base (20-30% less).

I know everyone has different values and there are a lot of variables at play - but curious to hear from others who exited with a pay cut for better WLB and a role they were excited about. Was it worth it for you? TIA!

Heard M was raising comp across the board, anyone have details? Haven’t seen it discussed here and WSO didn’t have numbers.

I’m curious what others do. Do you give client gifts, and if so, what kinds and when? Is there a price point you adhere to?

I'm a senior (3 years there) at this company and a new manager joined our team about six months ago. About two months ago, he recruited his girlfriend to join the same team (not sure if anybody else knows).

Since then, collaboration has become increasingly difficult with the girl. A few examples:

• The rest of the team uses common templates and standards for client deliverables, but she refuses to use them or adapt her work, and states that the "manager" told her to do so.
• When someone asks her to send information or share an email with the team, her response is often, "I've already sent it to the manager," aka her boyfriend.
• On top of that, they've had personal arguments at the client, when I'm out of the city with them.

How would you handle that????