The McK engagement manager who is a veteran and knows their job (and your job as CEO/CFO/VP) charges $10k per day, because they are basically an experienced executive for hire -- while the McK associate fresh from business school gets leased out for $1k per day. The latter are the equivalent of a smart but inexperienced freelance developer (who don't cost much less) -- though with the resources of McK corporate behind them, and the willingess to work 14 hours a day.
This guy knows. Unlike in other high paying professions, from day 1 in consulting you're dealing with C-level people. You learn how they think, how they talk, how they make decisions.
Learning to consistently convince people in power is a pretty nice skill to have IMO.
I think we're good at it if you believe from posts here at HN all we do is providing useless PPTs, and still growing double digits % each year while charging $2M for a 12w project.
The McK engagement manager who is a veteran and knows their job (and your job as CEO/CFO/VP) charges $10k per day, because they are basically an experienced executive for hire -- while the McK associate fresh from business school gets leased out for $1k per day. The latter are the equivalent of a smart but inexperienced freelance developer (who don't cost much less) -- though with the resources of McK corporate behind them, and the willingess to work 14 hours a day.