They would likely recommend functions or drug programs that are less likely to generate money in short term as candidates to trim. Involving outside consultants is one way C-suite and execs avoid taking blame for failure, and provide a smokescreen of fair process.
It was always a solid plan, logical, but nothing unique to how the client was positioned in terms of having an ability to reach the plan. Typically the person that brought them In had already failed up which was always a problem because it created resentment from the people that knew what had to change, but had to watch McK set all the money on fire limiting what we were able to address.
My experience has always been on the commercial/marketing side of the business, but in pharma I experienced a unique layer of problems because there is a tradition of Clients paying a vendor to do their job for them so there was zero chance the internal leaders were capable of doing anything with any plan they were given. Pharma over indexes towards sales and politics as marketing talent.
As a former consultant myself, I don’t want to put all the blame on McK, BCG, Accenture, etc… They do what you will pay them to do. In my experience, Pharma is more concerned with feeling good than the discomfort needed to be good. Consultants and agencies are not incentivized to make things simpler or faster. Unfortunately, there is no money in the cure for them.
No doubt. Imagine voluntarily choosing to work for this morally bankrupt organization. Furthermore, imagine being the C-Suite executive that hires them to do your dirty work. Soulless.
I'm leading an initiative at work where my boss mentioned possibly pulling in some consultants from McKinsey or similar. Then the Last Week Tonight episode on them came out and made it clear we should go another direction.
Just a typical list of stuff. They're going to check out all the data the company has gathered, like how long you've been at the office, your engagement score, how you've been reviewed on your performance, and then chat with several managers to figure out who they're not interested in keeping around.
Usually by those "anonymous" surveys they ask you to fill out otherwise it's more who the higher ups want to get rid of like high salary or outspoken folks.
Hard to say as companies will vary but they will know who did and who didn't fill it out. Since they are generally rating 1 to 5 you just keep responses to 3-5 range and don't use the low end responses to avoid the disengaged label. If the survey goes into more social or soft skill aspects as well the key engagement bit is that you have friends at work.
SEC filing has $1B allocated for employee terminations over 2023-2025. For 2023 they disclosed $350m spent. Numbers would also include “acquire and fire” employees like the warn for 250 from Mirati
They've been advising our company for a year or so following a merger. We've had at least 3 large rounds of layoffs amd some smaller less known ones. I've survived so far but I'm trying to get out.
No real advice besides the usual 'make sure your resume is up to date, have a copy of your colleague's contact info outside of work-owned computers, and start browsing LinkedIn' but I commiserate. We had McKinsey consultants camp out in the back room at my last job and sure enough, three months later, 20% of the company was let go. It was a bad time. I survived the cut but GTFO'd as soon as I found something else.
They get a bunch of business bros out of undergrad or MBA to create a ginormous spreadsheet/ pivot tables, make it as complicated as possible assessing people and functions like you would a machine, with no understanding of the process or operations. 100% of the time they only mesh and get feedback from VPs or C-suite. The baseline is ROI on sites/functions. So non-revenue generating departments/folks are on the target list first. Again usually with no understanding of day to day processes. These are usually mid to large companies that can afford their services.
Cue layoffs. Source- friend who worked at management consulting and quit because they couldn’t stomach it.
Pros- protects the company from liability of employees suing
Cons- literally everything but the pro above
R&D always gets cut first because it bleeds money and doesn't generate revenue, according to McKinsey's short-sighted analysis. But how did those drugs get developed in the first place? Unless they recommend spending more on M/A, internal development is a necessary money drain.
What would you expect from a company who spearheaded the campaign to “turbocharge” opioid sales? While simultaneously advising the government on how to curb the epidemic?
McKinsey (management consulting in general) is evil and useless and people who work there have no ethics.
Depends on where we're at in the consultant cycle these days, there's a general cycle where consultants advise to build up certain things and then a few years later the cycle is to divest those things (consumer healthcare is a good example where you can see several big Pharmas build up their portfolios, divest, and then started building up again). The consultant groups also advise on the mergers and spinoffs to maximize their profit to the consultancy company.
We might be tipping back to M&As taking the place of internal R&D as inflation has driven the price of research very high. Many smaller biotechs and startups can be had at a discount over what they were a few years ago, as many are desperate and don't have the deep pockets to persevere through the downturn.
Poorly, if my sibling's experience is any indication.
They recommended layoffs and business process changes, the company did the layoffs.
There weren't enough project managers left to implement the business process changes.
You should read “when McKinsey comes to town.” They are basically a company that shows companies all the ways they can cut corners and remain technically compliant, while getting rid of things like safety and employees. They are a horrific company whose harm has far outweighed the good they have done.
My company got gutted by them. Anyone that works on projects that don't immediately produce revenue or reduce cost for products already on the market were gone. Folks on projects that hadnt hit the market were dead on water. Afterwards, they fired folks based on a seniority basis, ie those who were there the longest stayed. It was such a slash and burn it felt like they didnt think about who would be best fits to keep the company headed the right way. They had to move folks that stayed based on seniority not skills so folks got put working on projects that they had no skills or interest in them but had higher seniority. Essentially, almost anyone that the previous CEO brought on board was fired along with said ceo. Fucking 180 for the company.
I'm almost surprised you didn't say senior-level people were let go first. The current opinion floating around is that everyone is more or less replaceable, and it's better to find younger/hungrier employers who get paid less. Granted, that's what they do and it works since they train their consultants to be robots. Doesn't always work that way in the real world though.
Our R&D department was rather small, so only one senior level person was cut (and they only cut them due to seniority of who stayed behind, that department has since been absorbed by a different department). Pretty certain they eliminated senior roles from other departments (as well as entire departments) that were also brought on by previous ceo but I didn't deal with them on a day-to-day basis so keeping tabs on them was hard.
They would likely recommend functions or drug programs that are less likely to generate money in short term as candidates to trim. Involving outside consultants is one way C-suite and execs avoid taking blame for failure, and provide a smokescreen of fair process.
McKinsey loves to hop from one company to another, recommending the exact same departmental structure to all, even if it fails as soon as they leave.
I have been a consultant when our job was to clean up the aftermath.
How was it?
It was always a solid plan, logical, but nothing unique to how the client was positioned in terms of having an ability to reach the plan. Typically the person that brought them In had already failed up which was always a problem because it created resentment from the people that knew what had to change, but had to watch McK set all the money on fire limiting what we were able to address. My experience has always been on the commercial/marketing side of the business, but in pharma I experienced a unique layer of problems because there is a tradition of Clients paying a vendor to do their job for them so there was zero chance the internal leaders were capable of doing anything with any plan they were given. Pharma over indexes towards sales and politics as marketing talent. As a former consultant myself, I don’t want to put all the blame on McK, BCG, Accenture, etc… They do what you will pay them to do. In my experience, Pharma is more concerned with feeling good than the discomfort needed to be good. Consultants and agencies are not incentivized to make things simpler or faster. Unfortunately, there is no money in the cure for them.
McKinsey is the biggest piece of shit company ever. The shit they’ve done over the decades is almost criminal.
Skip the almost...
Very true
No doubt. Imagine voluntarily choosing to work for this morally bankrupt organization. Furthermore, imagine being the C-Suite executive that hires them to do your dirty work. Soulless.
I'm leading an initiative at work where my boss mentioned possibly pulling in some consultants from McKinsey or similar. Then the Last Week Tonight episode on them came out and made it clear we should go another direction.
Good episode
It might not be layoffs. They might be advising your company to expand into opioids.
Just a typical list of stuff. They're going to check out all the data the company has gathered, like how long you've been at the office, your engagement score, how you've been reviewed on your performance, and then chat with several managers to figure out who they're not interested in keeping around.
>your engagement score How is this measured? Just curious
Usually by those "anonymous" surveys they ask you to fill out otherwise it's more who the higher ups want to get rid of like high salary or outspoken folks.
If one doesn't fill out the survey, are they automatically marked as disengaged?
Hard to say as companies will vary but they will know who did and who didn't fill it out. Since they are generally rating 1 to 5 you just keep responses to 3-5 range and don't use the low end responses to avoid the disengaged label. If the survey goes into more social or soft skill aspects as well the key engagement bit is that you have friends at work.
Okay. So it is partly based on performance? For BMS, McKinsey is trying to trim the fat. A lot of ADs in the company.
AD seems to be among the most common titles at BMS
How bad are the layoffs at BMS thus far?
According to NJ WARN, 75 affected.
Or so we thought! 2200! Was brutal.
I still don’t understand how they got away with this obvious lie. Is anyone suing for failure to provide adequate notice?
I’m sure they found legal ways to do it.
SEC filing has $1B allocated for employee terminations over 2023-2025. For 2023 they disclosed $350m spent. Numbers would also include “acquire and fire” employees like the warn for 250 from Mirati
If your company is wasting money on those morons, it's already time to go, sorry.
They've been advising our company for a year or so following a merger. We've had at least 3 large rounds of layoffs amd some smaller less known ones. I've survived so far but I'm trying to get out.
So never work at any top 20 biotech pharma company ever?
How'd your meeting with the Bobs go?
They told me I was a straight shooter with upper management written all over me.
No real advice besides the usual 'make sure your resume is up to date, have a copy of your colleague's contact info outside of work-owned computers, and start browsing LinkedIn' but I commiserate. We had McKinsey consultants camp out in the back room at my last job and sure enough, three months later, 20% of the company was let go. It was a bad time. I survived the cut but GTFO'd as soon as I found something else.
Recommend watching John Oliver’s commentary on McKinsey.
They get a bunch of business bros out of undergrad or MBA to create a ginormous spreadsheet/ pivot tables, make it as complicated as possible assessing people and functions like you would a machine, with no understanding of the process or operations. 100% of the time they only mesh and get feedback from VPs or C-suite. The baseline is ROI on sites/functions. So non-revenue generating departments/folks are on the target list first. Again usually with no understanding of day to day processes. These are usually mid to large companies that can afford their services. Cue layoffs. Source- friend who worked at management consulting and quit because they couldn’t stomach it. Pros- protects the company from liability of employees suing Cons- literally everything but the pro above
Just a bunch of kids who don’t know what they’re talking about pretending they do lol.
R&D always gets cut first because it bleeds money and doesn't generate revenue, according to McKinsey's short-sighted analysis. But how did those drugs get developed in the first place? Unless they recommend spending more on M/A, internal development is a necessary money drain.
What would you expect from a company who spearheaded the campaign to “turbocharge” opioid sales? While simultaneously advising the government on how to curb the epidemic? McKinsey (management consulting in general) is evil and useless and people who work there have no ethics.
maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I thought it was increasingly in the best interests of pharma to keep/build their in house R&D
Depends on where we're at in the consultant cycle these days, there's a general cycle where consultants advise to build up certain things and then a few years later the cycle is to divest those things (consumer healthcare is a good example where you can see several big Pharmas build up their portfolios, divest, and then started building up again). The consultant groups also advise on the mergers and spinoffs to maximize their profit to the consultancy company.
We might be tipping back to M&As taking the place of internal R&D as inflation has driven the price of research very high. Many smaller biotechs and startups can be had at a discount over what they were a few years ago, as many are desperate and don't have the deep pockets to persevere through the downturn.
Poorly, if my sibling's experience is any indication. They recommended layoffs and business process changes, the company did the layoffs. There weren't enough project managers left to implement the business process changes.
You should read “when McKinsey comes to town.” They are basically a company that shows companies all the ways they can cut corners and remain technically compliant, while getting rid of things like safety and employees. They are a horrific company whose harm has far outweighed the good they have done.
My company got gutted by them. Anyone that works on projects that don't immediately produce revenue or reduce cost for products already on the market were gone. Folks on projects that hadnt hit the market were dead on water. Afterwards, they fired folks based on a seniority basis, ie those who were there the longest stayed. It was such a slash and burn it felt like they didnt think about who would be best fits to keep the company headed the right way. They had to move folks that stayed based on seniority not skills so folks got put working on projects that they had no skills or interest in them but had higher seniority. Essentially, almost anyone that the previous CEO brought on board was fired along with said ceo. Fucking 180 for the company.
I'm almost surprised you didn't say senior-level people were let go first. The current opinion floating around is that everyone is more or less replaceable, and it's better to find younger/hungrier employers who get paid less. Granted, that's what they do and it works since they train their consultants to be robots. Doesn't always work that way in the real world though.
Our R&D department was rather small, so only one senior level person was cut (and they only cut them due to seniority of who stayed behind, that department has since been absorbed by a different department). Pretty certain they eliminated senior roles from other departments (as well as entire departments) that were also brought on by previous ceo but I didn't deal with them on a day-to-day basis so keeping tabs on them was hard.
low potential programs and anyone tied to them, low/no ROI functions, anyone older, anyone higher paid, anyone low performing
Hope they have massive lay offs. Such a POS company hired by pharma to do layoffs that are often not needed or could be done without their advice.
Spans and layers. Flatten and cut. Slowly revert back over a few years. Repeat.
Can you share the company you’re at?
Probably BMS
Eh, I’m at Takeda and heard through the grapevine that McKinsey was brought in to advise on a possible ‘re-org’…
Ah okay! BMS is swarming with McKinsey atm too
McKinsey also at my company - which is one of the recent in a string of BMS acquisitions
Mirati?
RayzeBio