#consulting

So demoralizing to work for a management consultant pretending to be a technologist. All this mo--n does is pay 20 contractors to do the work of 1 competent employee and outsource. Don’t get me started on saas contracts

Randomly heard recently that IT had a trip with a contractor to (of all places) Fiji to try and find some more low cost resources. Did any of y’all get invited to that trip?

Some quick Google searches show that it’s about 1/3 Cost of Living (COL) compared to Charlotte, so that’s somewhat understandable. But considering the time zone differences with all the other sites, how the heck are we supposed to have team meetings? Or is it only connection via email with no chance of getting global meeting's with existing teams in US / Europe / India.

If it hits $360, that means it's time to exit my position.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/ibm-stock-price-top-pick-2026-35af20b3

By: Mackenzie Tatananni
Updated Jan 08, 2026, 2:59 pm EST / Original Jan 08, 2026, 2:15 pm EST

Skeptics may argue that International Business Machines has lost the clout it had decades ago, but one analyst is doubling down on his bullish bet on the stock heading into the new year.

Much of the negative noise surrounding IBM appears to be unfounded, according to Oppenheimer analyst Param Singh, who has chosen IBM as one of his top picks for 2026. He rates the stock at Outperform with a $360 price target.

IBM stock was 2.1% higher at $303.04 on Thursday as the Nasdaq Composite traded in the red. Singh’s price target suggests the stock can rise another 19%.

Attitudes on the stock are indubitably mixed. Of 22 analysts polled by FactSet, 11 rate IBM at Buy, while seven rate it at Hold, and four at Sell. So why the vote of confidence?

“Bears have the estimates wrong, making expectations low into the print,” Singh said, referring to IBM’s fourth-quarter earnings report due later this month. He believes IBM can deliver durable growth by consistently raising prices, and described its portfolio of software as “sticky,” meaning clients repeatedly return to the products even though alternatives exist.

IBM has been winning bigger contracts because it has more products and services to offer, largely driven by acquisitions and the rollout of new mainframe computers. Last year, it paid $6.4 billion for HashiCorp, a provider of infrastructure and security tools, and has had early success integrating those offerings into its portfolio.

Taken together, these factors could boost overall revenue by 6% and software revenue by 9% in 2026, Singh said. His call for revenue growth is double the consensus forecast on Wall Street and nearly double the call for growth in software revenue.

“We believe IBM will positively surprise the bears on its earnings through the year, driving upside to the stock,” Singh said.

That comes after a decent run in 2025, a year dominated by the conversation around artificial intelligence. Shares rose 35% last year, behind a 39% gain for AI heavyweight Nvidia but ahead of a 20% gain for the Nasdaq.

There already are signs 2026 will be a good year. Despite recent chatter, Oppenheimer’s checks show little to no customer attrition, even as IBM passes along a 6% price hike to customers renewing enterprise license agreements.

And then there is IBM’s consulting division, which has become a significant contributor to revenue. Singh and the Oppenheimer team see little evidence of a pullback on spending, although software is expected to continue to grow more rapidly

Software revenue is expected to achieve sustained, double-digit percentage growth as opposed to “low-single-digits” for IBM’s consulting arm, Oppenheimer said.

Barron’s wrote favorably on IBM for a different reason in December: the company’s burgeoning quantum-computing division. Big Blue was an early entrant in the space, and aims to release a fault-tolerant quantum supercomputer by the end of the decade. That would be an industry first.

I believe their gonna cut so much more then most think Crazy this firm will consult to cut more management but yet their benefiting Executive Hires (McKinsey Alumni): Several high-ranking Verizon executives are former McKinsey personnel, including:
Alfonso Villanueva: Recently named Executive Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer, effective November 2025. He was previously a Senior Partner at McKinsey, where he led the Telecom, Media & Technology practice across Asia Pacific

Consulting companies for modern tech recommend 1000 per billion revenue, that would mean 5000-6000 employees

The math doesn't work and selling 25% of the company won't be enough. For anyone left there will be massive layoffs

In addition to ongoing engineering performance challenges, a lack of transparency around progress, and significant network and connectivity problems, we are now encountering scheduling issues with India-based engineers. Several have declined to attend meetings scheduled after 10:00 a.m. Central Time, citing the late hour on their end. In some cases, there is resistance to meetings held after 8:30 p.m. local time, which would require U.S.-based staff to substantially alter their work schedules by starting meetings as early as 6:00 or 7:00 a.m, a practice that falls outside standard industry norms. These scheduling disputes are repeatedly raised while the engineer declines to attend meetings or take on work, leaving the engineering lead and offshore vendor to sort through the issue. This pattern can persist for weeks, during which the offshore engineer continues to submit and receive approval for full 40-hour weekly timesheets. This outcome reflects the risks associated with outsourcing while eliminating experienced in-house talent.

Sounds familiar?

Starbucks did not lose $30 billion because of bad coffee. It lost it because the company
mispriced what actually created its value.

When Starbucks appointed a McKinsey-trained executive as CEO, the mandate was operational discipline. Costs were scrutinized. Processes were standardized. Stores were pushed to behave like efficiency machines rather than community spaces.

On paper, the logic made sense.

Consultants optimize margins by removing friction. But Starbucks was never a pure efficiency business. Its premium pricing depended on brand emotion, store experience, and cultural loyalty. Those are intangible assets, but they carry real monetary value.

As efficiency initiatives rolled out, customers noticed. Service quality declined. Stores felt
transactional. The brand lost its emotional moat. Foot traffic softened. Growth expectations reset. Markets reacted quickly. Over 17 months, Starbucks shed roughly $30 billion in market capitalization. Not from insolvency risk, but from a reassessment of future cash flows tied to brand strength.

The board reversed course. The CEO exited. Strategy changed.

The wealth lesson is structural. Consulting frameworks work best where value is mechanical and repeatable. Consumer brands compound wealth through trust, identity, and habit, not just margins.

When leadership optimizes the wrong variable, scale turns small misjudgments into massive losses.

Starbucks did not fail at execution. It failed at understanding what it was actually selling.

Recent layoffs at McKinsey have sparked a broader conversation about the state of the consulting industry. As one of the world’s most influential consulting firms trims its workforce, analysts are questioning whether this move reflects internal restructuring or a sign of slowing demand across the sector. Many are now watching to see if other consulting firms will follow with similar job cuts.

we can be creating a company in the consulting industry, about strategy, process, whatever, to bring our intelligence to the market

we know Vz weaknesses and we know the market, we need one leader to start it

anyone ?

we could also crush the wholesale market ....

Discussing a 10% workforce reduction in non-client-facing departments.

• Whatever goes around comes around - "It's the kind of advice the firm might offer one of its clients, and comes after headcount exploded between 2012 (17,000) and today (40,000). " Enough said !!
• "The advisory model is dying - consultancies would increasingly need to underwrite outcomes rather than bill hours" .. Duh !
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-15/mckinsey-executives-plot-job-cuts-in-slowdown-for-consulting-industry

Tech has the knowledge, no need for Consulting

Anyone know what we’re doing with them? resale?

They say his highest spot ever. I am wondering how much advertising we need to buy to get him to the top 5. Maybe we can pay a consulting company millions of dollars, so they can give us a strategy to get there. We can do it!

Hear me out!

It was reported that the executive board wanted to lay off 10000 employees. But of those, 3000 quit and others found a job somewhere within the company.

There are also reports that the restructuring expenses cost €3.1 billion.

Now I am no math genius but if I divide 3.1 billion with 3000, that is more than a million on an average. Given how high some salaries are, it is safe to assume that many employees got hundreds of thousands. But definitely not millions.

So where did all the money go?

If you ask around, you'll hear that a lot of money went to Marty Cagan and his company and to third-party consultants who suggested layoffs. I don't know if this is true. But we need an investigation into this.

What is to say that the executive board isn't actually laundering the money through these consultants?

In 2024, SAP expenditures related to restructuring were 10% of the total cloud backlog! Why would any company in their right mind reduce cash flows like this by laying off more employees and also doing share buybacks and paying executive bonuses in millions? And then saying there is no money left for salary increments or bonuses? We aren't even beating inflation and the board is spending money the company doesn't have just to continue with the tooth brushing exercise.

How can we as employees demand an investigation into this?

Has anyone considered consulting an attorney? Not for wrongful termination. Just to review the numerous documents to make sure we're not getting sc--wed according to your state's laws.

So I had cause to re-watch Office Space over the weekend. The studio released this movie in 1999. It focuses on the corporate absurdities that permeated cubicle life in the late 1990s, with the lead-up to Y2K as a backdrop.

I’ve seen the movie countless times and still find the story of the Bobs—two consultants hired to reduce headcount—hysterical, although the last seven years of hired consultants and annual layoffs is a bit too much art imitating life.

What struck me this time was a throwaway line I hadn’t noticed before. The main characters work for a company named Initech—which, they explain, is a made-up word created by smashing innovation and technology together. Sound familiar?

So the “innovative” naming that made us all Solvers became part of cinematic history over 25 years ago. Make no mistake, folks: these leaders of ours are not bringing anything new. We talk about AI and the positions it will eliminate, but with this crew of senior leaders, we could replace them with a Magic 8-Ball that simply says, “Hire consultants and restructure.” That seems to be their cure for anything that ails us.

Happy Thanksgiving all.

So the big "integration" of the Network orgs is going just super. The two SVPs who now run the combined mess apparently can't figure out what to do with us. Heard through the grapevine they just hired a big-name consulting firm to "evaluate the organizational design and operating models."

The kickoff meeting was yesterday. Feels familiar, right.

This seems to be the classic move when leadership doesn't actually have a plan. They pay a few million to a bunch of people who don't understand our business to come in and tell them what to do. The word is they're going on a "listening tour." They'll probably make a bunch of pretty charts and graphs that basically say we have too many people doing overlapping work.

It looks like a way to get cover for the cuts they already wanted to make. Now they can say "the data suggested" we need to streamline. The whole thing has that distinct passive-aggressive vibe. Instead of just making a tough call, they're bringing in a third party to do it for them. It's like they ordered a pour-over at a coffee cart and then asked the barista to taste it first to make sure it's good.

Maybe I'm just being cynical. An outside perspective could actually spot some real inefficiencies, I guess. But let's be real. This is likely just the first step. If you're on a team that's been a pain to get resources for, or your projects have been in "wait and see" mode since the SVP shake up, I'd be updating the resume.

This is usually how it starts. Heads up.

It has become prisoners of Mckinsey. Mck folks have more info than employee. on an average there is 1 (employee) to 10 McK person in meetings.. think if McK people charge 400 an hr. how much they are minting. I am sure Mr CIO gets the kickback. This company is going to go down.

Poor performance, multiple waves of layoffs, running the company to the ground. Bryan Hanson should be sued by Solventum employees, not paid $40 million. Please consult a good employment attorney to explore this option.

How many of these places do we expect to keep more than 1 person? Most of the Network Affecting work happens during the MW, most of the work can be contracted out or sent to other grps to run configurations. Will the switch techs just be there for vendor access??

Rumors are leaking out that once again McKinsey is bilking IBM for some serious cash and IBM seems to be going down the path of this McKinsey Three Horizons of Growth nonsense to grow sales and cut costs I guess. Inquiring minds would like to know how many tens of millions IBM has paid McKinsey going back to Gerstner where he was a director there for 13 years 1965-1978. Lets guess since Gerstner came in 1993 IBM has shelled out $3M/year to McKinsey. 32 years x $3M (likely more) is a cool $96,000,000. For what?

1 of a thousand failed examples here...IBM's Personal Computer division reached $4 billion in revenue by 1984, which was more than twice that of Apple at the time. The company continued to be a major player in the global PC market in the following years.
But by 2004, when IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo for $1.75B, annual sales for the division were approximately $10 billion. The company faced increasing competition from "clone" manufacturers throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, which eroded its market dominance and profit margins.

IBM completely F'd up it's wonderful PC business by not properly protecting the HW IP from Intel and the SW IP from MSFT. Combine that with IBM F'ing up MCA micro channel architecture, Token Ring, SNA and OS/2 and that is tens of billions of dollars lost to ineptness.

TODAY: Lenovo turned a $1.75B investment into $57,000,000,000 and IBM approx $62,000,000,000. An unknown Chinese firm in 2005 now rivals IBM for annual sales?! Could IBM use $60B of revenue for the next forever?!

IBM's latest Hail Mary here with McKinsey => https://flevy.com/topic/mckinsey-three-horizons-of-growth/case-growth-strategy-redesign-professional-services-competitive-market?srsltid=AfmBOoqmaY7ObrlfwqN8tDc9rAtBsbhQri_INrMLx8-zVOaRvYhjsN-9

How much money (and time) has CDW wasted on consultants? Between Deloitte, Bain, and others we have spent millions on companies that don't give us answers, they just get paid to tell us we are doing it wrong (and then leave it to our own people to try to figure out how to fix it). We also have hired on way too many former consultants too who clearly don't know how to lead. If we had just invested the money wasted on consultants internally on our people we would be performing better.

Whatever brilliant leader thought the best strategy was to pay a ton of money to consultants to come in, should be fired immediately.

In 2025, EPAM Systems is reportedly undergoing silent layoffs, with many employees on the bench being asked to leave due to a lack of long-term projects. Most available projects last only a few months (2, 3, or 6 months), after which employees are again placed on the bench and must prepare for interviews to get assigned to new work. This cycle of short-term projects and frequent bench periods has become a regular pattern within the organization.

They’ve been letting people go at GlobalLogic recently. It’s not a great consulting firm at all - there are serious workplace issues.... i’ve heard reports of unprofessional behavior, managers shouting at employees, and very low pay. They dismissed someone I know, and another acquaintance mentioned a large round of layoffs. I honestly haven’t heard much positive feedback about the company. What’s surprising is that they don’t even offer small holiday gestures like Christmas baskets or traditional treats. . The pay is very low - senior staff reportedly earn around 2 million a month after deductions. the whole industry seems to be declining.

Does anyone know?

I’ve been hearing a mixture of things in the forums around who gets laid off. This is what I’ve gathered:

Outside consultants, Accenture, came in to decide which parts of the business we are reducing head count in.

For legal reasons, Target can’t use some sort of metric to determine who in each part of the business specifically will get cut.

High performers aren’t safe either, but I also heard a contradictory claim that past performance reviews will be used to decide who gets laid off.

Direct managers won’t be involved in deciding which of their direct reports are laid off, since those decisions are being made at a much higher level.

They will target high paying jobs L6 and above, but at the same time they can’t seem as if they are doing age discrimination.

Tech seems to be “safe” because of attrition.

Merch org will get hit hard due to ?. No one really said why.

Anyone hear anything I haven’t mentioned?

If you have any questions about GP/TSYS feel free to ask here.
Every town hall we’ve had this year they’ve given strict direction to NOT speak to anyone from FIS regarding the Global Payments/TSYS Issuing divestiture.
We also went through a massive McKinsey overhaul all year and what a disaster it has been. RIFs around every corner and most of us have had the same anxiety about “when will it be my turn” all year. The guy who was leading that effort from McKinsey is now the CTO of GP real interesting how that worked out…
We are not hiring stateside anymore, it’s either India which also seems rare these days, or Phillipines.

Hello, I recently received an offer from AWS Proserve for a Sr Deliver Consultant role and wanted to know about the team.
Few points are :

1) How stable is the team? Are the frequent PIPs and layoffs?
2) How’s the medium term future of Proserve? Are there projects?
3) Is the delivery consultant more hands on role or is it more talking?

Thanks

COP will soon layoff significant numbers of hardworking and skilled personnel with significant institutional capacity and knowledge in its efforts to become as per McKinsey Focused Future Proof….
What does this new COP really look like and at what cost?
Or are the management consultants correct in that COP is rudderless and need of institutional retooling.

Boston consulting group was brought in and looked at RD TES and EHS. Look for more layoffs in these areas. EHS aligned to M&E likely will be a hit here too

I heard management is finally taking off the training wheels and will try to manage on their own for the first time in years by reducing McKinsey. Any truth to that? Just wondering what they will do without them to run our business.

Is BCBS is actively working with a consulting company that assisted with the previous round of layoffs? If so who?

Maybe before the end of the year?

I heard that McKinsey will be moving on from PSBU and going to EBU. Have fun with that. If you dont know who they are I would check out John Oliver's last week tonight deep dive on them. With the slow downs in EBU (shifts being cut, layoffs, reduced work weeks) and now McKinsey, I would watch out there.

Alix Partners will provide their final recommendation by December. Good luck to all. And God help us

TCS offer some of the lowest billing rates to clients- only robots can ensure profitability -humans staff cant, if humans then they should be like slaves/bonded labor.

When internal jobs are open to fill, most, if not all Booz Allen managers do not give priority to employees facing layoffs. I don't ever recall hearing the Booz Allen Hamilton CEO, or the many Vice Presidents, Principles or Directors come out and state that Booz Allen employees facing layoffs will be given first priority in filling internal jobs.

In fact, the last three external hires who onboarded in my group, came in with weak skills overall. Seems like Booz Allen internal candidates facing layoffs would have been a better bet.

If you are employee on the bench, unable to find new contracts to support within 2 days after being placed on bench or concerned contract, you are supporting is going to face cancellation or funding reduction. Don't delay in looking outside Booz Allen for new job. Don't forget to mark your LinkedIn profile as available or looking. Then hope for the best. If offered job with another company, leave Booz Allen Hamilton in rear view mirror and never look back.

People say Booz Allen was a better company before going public many years ago. I personally doubt that.

Bloomberg reported that PwC has been cutting prices for some services after clients pushed back, saying that if the firm is bragging about efficiency gains from AI, they should get a fair share of those savings.

PwC’s Chief AI Officer was quoted saying:
“Clients would hear us talking about using AI and say, we want our fair share of those efficiencies. We certainly, as appropriate, give our clients the pricing benefit of the efficiencies that we are achieving.”

The article also notes that PwC and other Big Four firms are facing challenges retaining partners, with hundreds leaving in recent years.

It’s interesting to see this tension. On one side, firms want to showcase how AI is making them more efficient and innovative. On the other, clients are essentially saying, “If you’re doing the same work faster and cheaper, then we should pay less.”

Do you think this trend of clients demanding “AI discounts” will spread beyond consulting and audit firms? Or will companies try to pocket the margin improvements instead?