"Mark that sounds like a terrible rat race."

Business Consulting pays well and can be really lucrative, so I don't feel sorry for the people involved.  It's seductive to stay but the sacrifices are high.

Working with a client on-site the working staff will begrudge the perceived high salaries of the consultants coming in, so will expect them there for work start and to leave after them.   A consultants day will either start by staying away or travelling for a few hours say from six to a client site starting work at half eight, working through lunch as it is often when you get access to staff, then when the staff all want to knock off at five and go home locally, the consultant carries on doing analysis, writing up the results, running workshops considering what's been learnt into the night.   Then the team will knock off about eight, get back to the hotel, change, eat with the same colleagues you have been with all day and then try and escape to get away from them say at ten.   Because you have been with people all day, you just want some alone time so you don't drop off until say one, when the process starts again with you bored, away from home, tired and knowing that the client may well ignore your work anyway or that organisational politics may mean it never gets implemented.

I used to work away four days a week, for example onsite in Swindon with me living in Nottingham, so our at six on a Monday, working all week in a modest hotel (costs coming out of the day rate, so no luxury on offer) and sometimes travelling to London at night to see my team, meet my staff and from the hotel participate in other work, international voice conferences at all hours.   Then either on a Thursday or often Friday lunch (with descretion from the client) rush back home to try and adapt back to normal life for the weekend.

This is usual practice and why it's important to progress and get so your chargeable expectation is less as you rise the ladder.   A partner will get a cut of his director's and their team's works, so becoming rich without doing that much work.   People in their forties still doing the four days a week away or equivalent become cannon fodder for the companies who begrudge that with the salary rises given to those people to retain them, their income starts to suppress the profit margin of the work or the client just won't pay the going rate so the people are discounted heavily.    Either way the longer someone is a consultant and not recognised for a specialism or at elevated status, the harder it is to make money off them until it gets to a tipping point.

Because these people are so busy they don't have time to learn the latest theories, techniques and thinking whereas the younger people come out of university with it or have time in their early years to do the ready.    Consulting is highly pyramidical in organisational structure so if you haven't made it upwards by your forties, you aren't going to so it's get out and up, or across or change paths.    The stress is unbearable and of course it takes a toll living that way on your personal relationships, many of these people end up divorced, tempted to have relationships with the people they are working with.   

There is no communal spirit for them as the company closed their offices, so if not on client site there is nowhere to go but work at home unless funded to go to London HQ.   So people spend ages alone either with clients or at home, no sense of connection and scared of ending up with no work 'on the bench' which is as ominous as it sounds.    When I was there I used to spend budget to keep the group together, organise nights out and so on, now they don't even have a Christmas do.    It's sad to observe.

I left it behind and went to a smaller company where I could use my strategy and industry skills without worrying about consulting (which I then built up on a more pragmatic, balanced approach).   Lots of my friends are still doing that 'rat race' that you were spot on about and then start ringing up asking about job opportunities, changing life focus and so on.

Last edited by MarkCoyle (2012-12-03 07:00:09)

There's lots of industries were people are on the road 5 days a week, or even longer working on rotations in god awful places. I've done it myself and its great when you are single, but in the end, a lonesome hotel room is a lonesome hotel room no matter who is paying or how many stars it is alleged to have. I like to be at home most evenings, but a decent business trip on my terms is always welcomed a couple of times a month. And some people really dig being on the road, we have one guy who is 74 and such is his skill set that he basically has been travelling around Europe for the last 10 years taking on assignments in what he considers nice places to visit that are of interest. Sadly, succession planning has not been the mantra in my sector of the oil & gas industry and there really is a shortage of decent young and hungry graduates or apprentences who have the fire and desire.

Consulting is often seen as a dirty word in my sector, as bringing them in draws attention to the fact that you haven't the capabilities in-house. I for one, would be really pissed-off if some consultant was brought in his 20s to tell me how to run things. But then again, my industry you do not reach your peak career level until you are 45 and then you plateau until retirement. Indeed, such are the specialisms that generally, people don't retire and take on ad hoc assignments into their late 60s or even early 70s. The only time I was involved with consultants they were in their early 50s which I considered an respectable age for experience to have input.

I left a job in my early 20s once, was working 12-14 hours, 7 days a week for well over a year and then I threw the towel in. Had enough. They had to get 3 people in to do what I was doing, to my surprise, as I had basically left them in the lurch, they invited me back with open arms about 6 months later, were the whole process of over work and long hours began again. A pretty shitty learning curve, but the payback came in my 30s and I've had a ticket to ride ever since.

If you like plenty of regalia there's plenty of reenactment societies out there.

^No, that only means that the clock of the peak of menswear actually broke at that time. The evidence is clear for this, particularly around 73 and 74.

Stopped Clock - the problem then is you're stuck in the past.  I do know people in that place, old Mod friends who still won't listen to music after 1970 etc......yawn.....

I said a lot on this thread back a decade ago, reading back it's like reading messages from my son now.

Last edited by An Unseen Scene (2022-02-08 07:21:48)