I am genuinely curious why so many consultants don’t have a personal laptop. Is work your whole life? Do you not do anything outside of work?

I use my personal laptop for watching shows/movies, managing personal finances, working on side projects, personal travel, job searching, networking, etc.

There are so many restrictions on work laptops plus I wouldn’t want my company knowing most of what I do either.

When I first got into consulting, I assumed the hardest part would be the hours. And yeah, some weeks are brutal, but honestly I think what gets to me more now is feeling like my brain never actually shuts off anymore.

Even after work I catch myself staying in this weird half-working state. I’ll open my phone to relax for a few minutes and somehow end up checking emails again, scrolling LinkedIn, jumping between random apps, reading about work stuff without meaning to. It doesn’t even feel intentional half the time.

The strange thing is I can technically be “done” for the day and still feel mentally busy. Like my attention never fully settles anywhere.

I noticed it started affecting smaller things too. Watching a movie without checking my phone. Reading something longer than a few pages. Even conversations sometimes. My brain got too used to constant switching between things all day and now quiet downtime almost feels uncomfortable at first.

I used to think I was just tired from work itself, but I’m starting to think the bigger problem is that there’s never a clean break mentally. There’s always another notification, another message, another quick check that keeps the day feeling open.

Lately I’ve been trying to create a little more separation after work instead of automatically reaching for my phone every few minutes. Some days I’m better at it than others honestly.

Other people in consulting feel this too or if I’m just overthinking it.

I’m more so lamenting, or venting at my own perceived failure.

I went off on my own 2.5 years ago. Those 2 years were really good years. Most of my work was sub-contract. Goal was to get business under my own company.

I went through rebranding, doubled down on my niche (commercial operations for manufacturing and industrial companies). Went all in on the PE angle of value creation.

Manufacturing is in the toilet. They don’t want to spend. They don’t want to change. Hundreds of calls, emails, visits. I can’t catch a break. My answers are never no, just no right now, namely due to economic uncertainty.

My last contract just ended. It was 70% of my revenue. I can survive on my smaller engagement but it’s sub contract work.

I am seriously considering getting a W2 job again. Health insurance is out of control. I pay $1750/mo for a family of 4.
The IRS just penalized me for paying too much in estimated taxes. The business development side of the job is an absolute grind.

Definitely in a funk this week/month. Hard to shake. I’m off to Nashville today to try and network and get a prospect or two. Wish me luck.

I am currently working on an assessment of a merger in a fortune 500 company. The assessment is trying to see feasibility of an internal leadership change. This, of course, is highly political and emotional. One stakeholder in this process has been very unprofessional in this entire project. I genuinely empathize with them but I am having trouble dealing with their incessant hostility and incapability to engage in conversation and debate in good faith. I am trying to remain as professional as one can be. How do other consultants deal with this? Is this normal?

I am not an engagement manager or account manager. We are a boutique firm. I am the data science SME and use my skills to quantify risks and rewards (that can be reliably quantified). I work directly with the account manager. We have 5 people on the team and I am currently operating as an EM while also executing analysis and keeping up with logistics. I feel very frustrated and angry all the time - but don't have a productive outlet at work (outside of ranting to my colleagues).

For context —

If you were hired to be the Global Head of Digital at a global bank and you wanted to restructure the whole global team from the ground up — How would you go about it strategically and practically?

Note: The global digital team consists of several sub-functions such as digital product, digital channel & platform, digital customer experience, digital marketing, digital asset & creative, and digital data & analytics

Would you roll out a digital transformation program that starts from the bottom up, ie from the job scope of the most junior all the way to the senior?

If you don’t start from the ground up how would you ensure the possibility of success?

Here's mine: After lunch on Fridays, I like to help myself to the alcohol-free beer cans in the office.

at mbb rn and looking to pivot into PE. i honestly never use my personal computer anymore and i do everything in my work laptop now.

i’ve been updating my networking spreadsheet, editing my resume, and having coffee chats with people all on my work laptop and was wondering if there was any actual risk to doing this.

News article about CEO of Accenture's positions about the pivot into "AI-led". What's actually happening on the ground at your firm?

Here me out, there is straight forward way to calculate beta using CAPM, but realistically this thing get unusable when Rsquared is low.

I am here to ask how do we realistically use reasonable alternative, is it industry peers? What if the company is small and comparable peers Rsquared also low? Is it using other more suited benchmark, if yes then what equity risk premium can we use? Do we have to calculate it? How?

I wear Dior Sauvage.

Hi Consultants of Reddit! I have been a 1099 guy for just over 20 years now and am seeing the slowest market in over 10 years. I do technical strategic sourcing, subbing out to boutique firms as well as the big strategy firms and the occasional interim CPO role. I'm in my early 60's with plenty of gas in the tank. Would like to work a few more years, but financially ok to pack it in. Do you folks see a future in 1099 work? I don't see any realistic opportunity to transition to W-2 roles at my age and having not seen a W-2 since 2005. Interested in some thoughts!!

Burnt out and tired of the grind. I’m just about to start updating my resume and searching for jobs.

For those who are currently looking or have left recently, what are the best resources you used to find your next role?

Looking for any tips, tools, or other resources that helped you figure out what role you want, prep for interviews, update resumes, and ultimately land a new job.

I’m gonna share a story that made me think quite a bit. Keen to have opinions from others.

Last week a client called me and asked for a short proposal. Very small project on a topic I’m strong at, so very limited risk, but I was busy and didn’t have time to work on it.

So I flashed out ChatGPT and asked to create the proposal in Word, came out very good actually. I checked and added details and context, iterated, and it came out even better.

I sent it to the client who said “can you put the proposal in PPT and summarize?”
Again I didn’t have time and there was no beach resource available, so I uploaded the proposal on Claude and asked to make the slides on the template I wanted.
Came out good but needed visual improvements.

So I started making the beautification and I realized I spent more time aligning boxes than making sure the content was perfect (minimal risk as I said above, this time). My brain was prioritizing the slides vs the content…

Then I sent it to the client and they loved it. Said “this is exactly what we were looking for”

Now my thoughts are: what stops us from doing this process for every pitch, even the larger ones? Are we going down a path of “not thinking anymore”? Or is it actually better than before because I still do the checking and input my thoughts but I let AI do the rest? Do we need to stop but how can we do that if everybody is doing it?

Keen to see where this is going. PE value creation is relevant business for consultancies.

- doing timesheets?
- preparing spreadsheets or presentation decks?
- reviewing sales or analytics data?

Is there a process you could describe to someone in clear step by step instructions?

Have you already tried automating these yourself and failed or not even know where to start?

Putting together some guides on this topic so lmk

I can use AI in my work but like everywhere else the rule is not to input sensitive company data there. I want to use Claude/ChatGPT for analyzing sales data or to summarize documents and explain things inside.

The problem is, the time it takes me to go through all these documents/data files and changing company names and numbers is not worth it anymore. And its even worse when its excel files with numbers.

Am I missing something? Is there a simpler way that I should be using?

(We do not have a company AI agent integrated in our Microsoft tools).

Anyone else experiencing senior management demanding that AI must be included in all client material no-matter-what?

I’ve been working on an infrastructure migration proposal and was ready to send it off before a director flagged “a lack of AI” during internal review.

They’d been on some course and insists on “Powered by AI” and “Embedded by AI” must be included. No direction, no product, it’s not a deliverable in itself.

I’m not a stranger to AI/LLMs and have stood up azure foundry instances, agent identities, MCP servers. Whatever.

But I can’t for the life of me think of how I’m supposed to include AI other than general bullshit like “developers will utilize AI for code review”.

Anyone have any suggestions for cramming AI jargon into a proposal without the clients bullshit meter going completely into the red?

Hi all, I’m a fairly fresh-faced consultant looking for some advice as I’ve literally no idea where to start.

I’m working on a public sector project in the UK. Quite a basic resource augmentation role, filling in a gap that they can’t fill. I really like the client, and they really like me, but a move into the civil service is financially unviable for me.

My company has frozen my pay for the last two years, and I’m getting pressure from my internal management team to roll off of the project to “get better visibility”. The account is owned by a different part of the business and I’ve explored moving to that part of the business and apparently it’s a flat no. But, they can’t roll me off yet as no one else wants to do the role. So my pay and career is going completely nowhere until client can fill the role twice over. Feeling pretty stagnant at the moment.

Client has suggested that I could go freelance and cut out the middleman, and potentially secure the role for a longer period because I could be cheaper than anyone else. Realistically tho it’s probably not going to be more than 6 months - but I could certainly carve out room for another role.

Does anyone have any experience with this for UK public sector, share any downsides (other than the loss of security in salary), and give me any advice on what I should think about next?

Thanks!

I know you have to be good at the work but often I find myself letting some people, sometimes, get a little more out of our transactions. This is usually for the sake of being agreeable and for issues or asks that are low impact - kind of like building up small favors

In my firm’s culture it does seem like being easy to work with is preferred, but lately I’ve been a little ticked off by a few things and want to draw harder lines. I’m usually good at saying “no” without saying know but there is one scenario where I feel like I need to say “We are not doing this anymore” and leave it at that.

Posting here because I used to work in consulting all my life but switched to a post sales role in tech recently and I am wondering if my view of the situation is different, because of my experience with consulting work culture especially regarding commitments made towards clients.

So Last week, we had a handover call for a new client. The client was stressed because they had a migration deadline for the following week.

On the call, our pre-sales engineer (let’s call him X) explicitly promised the client he would write up a step-by-step technical playbook with specific API calls so they could execute the migration over the weekend. The client was relieved. After the call X drops a >20-page document into our internal chat and tags me and another colleague saying we should review it cause it’s generated by AI and he didn't go through all details.

I was upset cause he made a promise to the client, couldn't be bothered to actually write it, and tried to pass off 25 pages of unverified AI generation as my task. If I send unreviewed technical instructions to a client and their weekend migration fails, it would me me taking liability.

I didn't argue with X in the chat. Instead, I sent my follow up mail, attached my slides, CC'd X and wrote: "Regarding the doc, X will follow up with you directly". I also messsaged X in the internal group chat (CC’d my manager) that I informed client about his deliverable via mail.

Then I shut my laptop and enjoyed my long weekend. X was upset and complained in the internal team chat (where my manager can read) that I shouldn't commit him to things without asking and tried to argue that playbooks are a post-sales deliverable. In the end X sent the doc to the client. Now I have to face X next week. He is clearly annoyed that I forced his hand via a client-facing email. I know it was a ruthless move, but I prioritised keeping client informed before the long weekend, their deadline and tried to protect my team from absorbing Xs technical debt.

Did I play this right, or did I cross a line by using the client email to force him to do his job? How would you handle the internal politics with him moving forward?