McKinsey & Company Reviews

I worked at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Best school, best work, best colleagues, best culture

Cons – Can get stressful and tiring, requires a certain ability to rebalance

Advice to Senior Management – Grow slower, keep the culture, never give up the partnership (a la Goldman).

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than a year

Pros – McK can be a great place to work:
- As a young consultant, you'll get to interact with C-level executives and be given far more 'exposure' than you would in industry
- You typically learn a lot in a short space of time. Surprisingly for me, most of the learning was on the soft side (how to network, how to speak compellingly, how to structure communications, etc)
- The work is varied: you typically won't be working on the same thing for more than a few months

Cons – For most people, it's only a great place to work for a short period of time:
- The lifestyle is pretty awful (typically ~70 hours a week, although it varies by project and by office)
- The work is varied, but gets boring fairly quickly
- The higher you go, the more political it becomes

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Extremely smart, driven and down-to-earth colleagues
Unparalleled formal and informal training/mentorship
Real meritocracy with direct, timely, actionable feedback to help you develop

Cons – Long hours
Work-life balance
Immediate salary does not necessarily correspond to the hours put in

Advice to Senior Management – Preserve the McKinsey culture at all cost.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Great learning opportunities - I've learned so much that I can take to my next job
Very intelligent colleagues - didn't like everyone, but I did respect them all for their abilities
More a meritocracy than any other place I've worked (but not perfect as humans still make the decisions)

Cons – Poor work-life balance (very bad if, like me, you're an S on the Myers Briggs matrix vs. an N - this really matters, so please don't take it lightly!)

Vast majority of people are very serious, and extremely work-focussed - very little office banter
Sales skills (which I'm very good at) not really valued

I've recommended that people do work for McKinsey - but PLEASE make sure you do so with your eyes open and take great caution if you're an S on Myers Briggs!!

Advice to Senior Management – Don't believe your own hype so much; yes, McKinsey is a very good firm with lots of positives, but it's not nearly as good as the internal communications would have you believe - these are posted by senior management and are therefore skewed towards people who like it so much that they decided to make it their long term career

Don't believe in your own 'values' so much. London office partner values comprise (or used to comprise) five different values, but one dominates all the others - putting clients first (e.g. over the work-life balance, happiness and health of their staff) - as to make the rest largely irrelevant

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at McKinsey & Company full-time for less than a year

Pros – Great place to learn strategy, problem solving and working with top executives in an extremely caring and supportive environment that constantly drives you to improve.

Cons – Requires a level of drive and aspiration uncommon among most executives - if you are looking to push paper and not apply yourself, then this is certainly not the place for you. The firm pushes you to learn constantly and this might not be a career for people looking for plush offices and large pension funds.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – - great culture
- smart people
- challenging work
- sponsored education (MBA)

Cons – - long working hours at some projects
- a lot of travel

Advice to Senior Management – Keep up the good work and preserve the culture of the company

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great people to work with, high level of quality standards, a lot of job opportunities afterwards

Cons – almost impossible to build work life balance

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great brand to have on your CV
Opportunity to learn about a lot of sectors in a relatively short period of time
Get to work with some interesting people, and learn how to best do a project in a short period of time

Cons – Long, long hours (meaning way longer than necessary)
Quite a few arrogant know-it-alls

Advice to Senior Management – Please put some more effort into looking after people's work-life balance and ensure appropriate bottom-up feedbacks are taken into account, and actioned!

– I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great place, Great people, Great work themes, Global

Cons – Opportunities available very limited in research roles, analytics roles. Even though there is increasing importance of focused client facing analytics, the rewards and growth options remain focused towards conventional consulting track.

Advice to Senior Management – Integration of various roles and more diagonal system liquidity
Co-developing research & analytics directly to client services.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at McKinsey & Company full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Coilleagues are fun, environment dynamic and very meritocratic. People are fun and tend to create groups that stick over time

Cons – Lack of specialization and ownership of results; you feel disposable. The average lifestyle is bad and relatively unpredictable

Advice to Senior Management – Give people a life!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend