I will not comment on issues of prestige or agree/disagree with the numbers presented, but my perspective is that it hardly surprises me (if it were true) that BCG has a larger revenue/FTE than McKinsey.

When I was at McKinsey, one of the things that blew me away was the availability of full-time support staff on tap to facilitate our professional excellence and our personal comfort.
While this certainly made our lives privileged and optimised, the size of that overhead cannot be ignored. 
Remember, client fees across MBB do not vary much (neither does compensation at the lower hierarchies), so if you're adding more personnel into the mix (whether directly via large Visual Design teams, dedicated Big Data professionals; or indirectly via the extended concierge services McKinsey has to support the non-client-related aspects of Consultants' lives), then that will diminish your revenue/FTE.
I do know from speaking to colleagues at BCG that we at McKinsey were quite pampered when it came to the availability of perks.

Further, McKinsey continues to outpace BCG into building out the firm beyond a strategy warehouse. There are now so many additional businesses at McKinsey (some of which are not popular among the legacy Consultants as they believe it dilutes the McKinsey brand and places expansion ahead of prestige) and these tend not to be as top-dollar earning as the usual project approach of EM + 3 /4/5 and the Partner. 

I think only an apples-to-apples comparison will serve, but, at any rate, who cares? Prestige will always be a valid factor for those considering (and currently pursuing) careers in MBB, but revenue/FTE will never approximate prestige…nor should it.

(edited)

Hi there,

I'm not sure I agree here. The numbers I'm familiar with still put McKinsey in the lead. I would also still say McKinsey is still the clear cut #1.

This is a pretty nuanced/complex discussion that would require more than a Q&A debate! (In terms of where each will be in 5-10 years)

Hello there

Thanks for sharing this observation. Could you please share the source? If you are referring to the Wikipedia article, I'd be skeptical about comparing numbers taking from different sources, which is what they are doing. If you use the Forbes database that is the source for the McKinsey number in that Wikipedia article, you will see that in BCG's profile in the same database the number quoted is $8.6bn for 2021 revenues while in McKinsey's, $10.6bn. So you might be drawing on the discrepancy in the methodology between two sources to make an erroneous statement.

All of that by the way is relevant to data interpretation that you will get to do as a consultant. Keeping track and being critical of your sources is important to get your facts straight! 

Hope this perspective helps! 

(edited)

Hello,

Seems like you got a lively discussion going here about the revenue numbers!

Since a lot of people who frequent this forums are looking to get jobs in consulting, I just wanted to add that, regardless of the accuracy of the observation:

1. Revenue does not directly equal prestige! McKinsey and BCG both do a lot of great work with many interesting clients in a variety of markets, so there's no reason to dismiss one firm over the other just based on revenue.

2. Even if it did, there are many factors beyond prestige that you want to be considering when looking for a place of work. What is the office culture like, what clients do they work with, what sorts of responsibilities do you get, etc.

It surprises me that revenue per FTE is a meaningful metric for either firms.  I definitely don’t see the correlation with prestige…

Just randomly saw this chat and want to add an opinion on that (as Ex-McKinsey EM)…

First of all, please do not compare “prestige” with “profitability” - these times are slowly fading away when you hire a consultant based on the pure reputation. Things like, region, sector, function coverage are by far more relevant when it comes to these descisions. And especially, at times like now, probably fees matter the most (restructuring projects are sold with a heavy discount). Overall, I think the observation that McKinsey is building up more support services and “sub-entities” (Lumics, Orphos, etc.) which charge lower fees but also pay less to the consultants (hence lower Rev/FTE). But this is part of the overall strategy to grow - nowadays the clients can often do their own strategy and need rather a review or Benchmark (oh how I cannot hear this word anymore) - hence you need to create additional value add. McKinsey was always known for sending “young, unexperienced graduates” to clients by saying that they have smart people who will understand the problem fast, even if they have never done a similar project before. This business case worked in the past but gets more and more crushed by ex-consultants being clients now. To fight against it, McKinsey pushed towards implementation. BCG and Bain on the other hand were alsways far more “functional”-focussed firms (esp. Bain with their Commercial DD/PEPI focus), there you train the people to focus on sectors and functions to generate more value-add. As a result they don't need to dilute their revenue as much. Haven't looked at the number, but I would expect that Bain has even the highest margin of all of them. But what matters the most: For anybody up to Associate Partner/Principal these things don't matter much, as pay won't be significant different. The big difference comes for Partners or esp. Senior Partners, who “feel” the different profitability (here I know based on more than a handfull of Senior Partner pay-ranges that Bain Senior Partners earn 1.5-2 times more than a McKinsey ones). But again - likelyhood to stay up until that role and get elected is quite low, hence irrelevant.

On the prestige thing again - McKinsey lost on this point continuously given their strong focus on the public sector and as a result being focus of media. But still, if it comes to career opportunities post-consulting, I would frame it this way:

Go for McK, if you want to go for a typical corporate role afterwards. McK has the best network, which will help you to be directly recognized within every corporate.

Go for BCG, if you are rather a startup/bizdev person, as BCG people tend to focus on building their own business/being a bit more out of the box if it comes towards long-term career goals.

Go for Bain, if you are into Finance or esp. Private Equity Exits. Their platform, toolkit, infrastructure is by far the best and gives you the best training as well as network to make an Exit into this direction.

So, lot's of words - but hope this gives you a better view on this topics.

Cheers

Hi, could you elaborate more on the various issues?