I worked for 15 years as an engineer for 1 organization and Jobs is 100% right. Much of what I learned came as a result of having to live with the decisions I made on behalf of my customer. When it broke, they came to me and I had to fix it. And when I designed it next time during the next iteration, it didn't break. My ability to design good systems increased dramatically as a result.
I think Steve here is too hard on consultants. Of course, I say this as a consultant. I am a civil engineering consultant. Municipalities and States hire me to do design work for them exactly because they don't have the in-house expertise to do what I do, which is very niche. How could they be expected to do what I do? In fact, it would be a tremendous waste of their money and resources to keep someone on staff that solely does what I do for the once-in-a-decade time they need the work done. In this situation, I do work all around the region with my clients when it's time to do those designs. I design traffic signal systems - not the individual traffic lights, but whole systems. I also do individual signals, but mostly systems. This is only comes up in a mid-size municipality every decade or so, therefore it's not financially sensical to keep someone on staff who has this expertise. In this way, I am not the only villain that Jobs says I am. I provide an essential service that Jobs, who I consider a layman in this manner, takes for granted.
@@craigfdavis I think was thinking more along the lines of professional management consulting firms. Not technical/engineering consulting or similar consultants with direct experience & specialists.
@@jimihendrixx11 That may be the case and it's a good point. I do my job as a consultant as if I am employed WITH the client in their business. Because, at the end of the day, yes, I can't claim ownership of the asset itself, but in lieu of that, my professional reputation is the commodity here, and without that, I have absolutely nothing.
@@craigfdavis To be fair, Jobs didn’t say you were a villain; he said you don’t have as many opportunities to learn as an “owner.” Also, he was (obviously) generalizing, and whenever you generalize, you know that there are a lot of specific cases where your generalization doesn’t apply.
I work in IT. My company decided to spend close to 30 MILLION DOLLARS on consultants instead of hiring more help (which would have been a fraction of that). CIO was an idiot (got fired this last week). Consultants walked away from a fire with their wallets full and left us with the mess. I quit shortly afterwards.
even worse sometimes it's the CIO force their direct report to follow the lead of the consultant when their direct report is more experienced, just because the CIO don't want any trouble
This is honestly applicable to most things in life. You can have all the knowledge and theories about something, but until you experience it yourself you never 100% knew it
True with everything that you read, you try and haven't gotten to the depth of it. IMO SJ has broadly classified consultants, and not touched upon this point. An individual's need, passion and ability to learn is what drives things more so than one being a consultant or not.
I think it's a mixture of internalization, what our takeaways are from the knowledge that's imparted to us, as well as developing our own translation/interpretation of how we express said takeaways that's the third dimension to Jobs's analogy of a picture of fruit. Depth is really a hard concept to express.
Even if we experience things ourselves, there is no way to know every single thing about what is happening and even if we quest towards that, it can distract us from other things that we should be seeing otherwise we are super injured or dead then ultimately we are into the afterlife experience forever. Still though, if the afterlife was indeed better with the deserved rules or not, it would be good people had no idea how to do everything "right" to not have died.
Jobs wasn't really that technical, nor he was a scientific/math guy , but still had a remarkably bright, consistent logical and analytical mind with the ability the put complex real world problems into simple words. Just brilliant!
They don't give money for power points they give money for cover. So consultant comes in and says you should do X. Management could have done that but they're scared of pissing off the board or scaring anyone. So they wrote off a million dollars worth of lunches and power points and they say hey we have this data (quiet part is we already had that) and it says we should make this big change. If big change works your internal management takes credit. If big change fails it's the consultant's fault.
@@dylanbaker5766 True for the mckinsey and other management consulting. But the big part of the consulting is low payed engineers basically running the company, they are not just power point makers. It is interesting for companies as they can cut them easily if needed so no complaint, strike, salary discussion ... The point he is making/the way I understand - Consulting is a shallow experience for the consultant and they should seek for more, he is not doing a critic of their work.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. Steve Jobs was not aware that his successor was expanding the footprint of their SAP platform with consultants and contractors to build out the worlds biggest consumer electronics computer company supply chain and order management software and that means scores of Big 4 consultants.
This is more than that tho. Very different from someone like a gary vee type selling platitudes. he's giving actual advice to specific professions on being more hands on in their design approach which is absolutely correct.
I have 20 years in manufacturing and 22 since as a consultant so I've pretty much seen it all. Jobs is right for consultants without significant industry experience. Those of us with arrows in our backs and substantial scar tissue who become consultants are usually better at understanding where our clients are coming from and what issues they may face. So we tend to give them better advice. Beware of the big consultancies; they hire MBAs right out of school and throw them at you for $600/hr. While these kids are smart, they're knowledge-free and are learning at your expense. Make sure you know what you're getting when you hire a consultant.
Interesting. I work with the marketing department of several consulting agencies. Surely this scenario Steve tells, no longer applies to the worlds leading organizations? Beccause those I talk to, all have developers in their organizations. They all have partner programs with their vendors. Its no longer just a case of consulting being purely a sales division? I also happen to work with several of the vendors, none of them would be even half as successfull if it wasnt for consultants. Interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
"… not owning the results, not owning the implementation, I think is a faction of the value and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get better." Ownership is important for setting clear accountability and responsibility to generate better results.
As a consultant myself, this is very true. I find myself lucky that my current client has kept me around for about 5 years now and I have been able to see the fruits of my labor blossom and some come apart. Prior clients I have zero insight to if I have any lasting impact.
This is what I was hoping to find- consulting to create partnerships and review/refine/own your work over many years for lasting effects with the companies you've partnered with. I feel this is the happy medium between the consulting Jobs speaks about and being internal to the company with needs.
At least you’re honest and probably good enough that they kept using you. Been through lot’s of consultant engagements over the years and they were always a disaster. At times we found savings despite the consultants but they and the VP that hired them attributed the ideas to the consultants so that they don’t look like total idiots.
I agree with Jobs’ assessment. Having been on both sides of the consulting equation, however, I found that companies tended to value the ideas of consultants over the ideas of their employees. If push ever cams to shove, the consultant’s advice was taken and the employee’s was ignored or certainly underrated. So, if you have enough experience in an industry, it is far less stressful being a consultant. You also have the advantage of being above the fray when it comes to office politics. And this, in spite of the inherent depth and value of loyal employees’ ownership of systems, problems and issues.
Haha, that’s why I decided to do tech consulting for a period of time. I would give the exact same advice and suggestion but if it didn’t come from a consultant, my management wouldn’t buy it. I’ve always felt that since consultants don’t have skin in the game, management never feels threatened with someone below them in the corporate hierarchy to potentially know what to do.
What you are describing is actually a quite known bias. If you pay money for a recommendation or guidance you are far more likely to follow it (I know employees get paid as well but their payment isnt linked as directly to a result). That is why so many people still buy so many books about business and money. The knowledge is in the internet but many people can follow advice out of books easier that advice they got for free
It's weird because in non-profits it's almost the opposite. The employees have no ownership and typical tenure is like 6 months. So the consultants are often the longest running people, so the responsibility gets dropped on them for basically everything.
My Father taught me perhaps the most valuable lesson in life: “The man who’s never made a mistake, has never made anything!” But like the best lessons, it took me years to fully understand his wisdom. Thank you Dad.
So true. I think that I've learnt more in my career than many others exactly, because I experimented and made mistakes. It of course helps to observe others as they are making mistakes. Then you learn from their mistakes as well. 🙂
Consulting is a great career if you do it from within a company that primarily makes a product. For example a consultant in a software company works with the customers to make them successful with the software. The customers don’t go away, just transition to support. You are still accountable long term for the customer’s success.
I’m a tech consultant and trust me when I say this, we bullshit and re-contract a lot. Cannot wait to launch my own business and quit, I have realized that the corporate world is not for me.
By their very nature consulting companies don't want your "problem" to go away. It's like pharmaceutical companies being more than happy to develop "treatments" but they're reluctant to develop a "cure" because it would be a one-time thing.
His hand gestures are phenomenal.... try & do that just by yourself alone..... & then realise he used them fluidly... in " live " presentations to......thousands.... RESPECT !
From a company who can't afford to lose $1 mil, we have lost $20 to $30 million dollars from having a restructure with poor consultants, he's 100% right.
Often it’s the fault of management why you lose money, not from the consultants. Sometimes the management want to change something they do not have a clue of and that’s the result.
Worked 10 years in steady jobs and recently swiftched to consulting, but not completely standard as I am fulltime employed in a tech company, and they send me out to customers to consult in short cycles. It’s awesome. As someone else said, learning to listen is key. Often I collect questions that I have to reaerch myself, which means gathering insight from colleagues and building an internal network. I often wonder what happens to the projects that I work on, but sometimes customers do take initiative to come back and say that they were happy. My sense of continuity comes from the fact that because I work with my company’s tech all the time, I gather valuable feedback that I can feed back to the other engineers. That means that if I do my job right, some of the problems that I face this year, I won’t ever have to face again. I expect to do this for a while now, maybe years.
Agreed problemat1que. I've known some great technical SME-type consultants during my career. I've never met a single competent strategy consultant. Not one. Seen millions of dollars wasted chasing shiny new "north stars" that never work out.
After many years in business, I finally learned (from a consultant) that consultants are often hired to cook up and justify whatever conclusions are wanted by the person who has the mandate to hire them. So even worse than pontificating on industry or domain matters where they may have less expertise than their clients, they are used to manipulate or eliminate opponents in organizations. A bit like think tanks or lobbyists ranting about "data". This might explain why many consultants end up working in senior government positions.
That´s what they are paid for, true. The other thing are very specialized consultancies who basically get paid for industry espionage. What else would you want to call it, when they do the 10th implementation of a CRM in the car industry? Oh, could you tell us how ... are doing it? Sure, no problem ;)
As someone working in consulting, I can comfirm this. In my biggest project I had to mediate between the global organization and the local representatives from the different markets where the company operates. "Mediating" here basically meant to push back on what was coming from the local organizations and enable what the global organization wanted to achieve. In this way they achieve what they want but do not put their faces and the consultants have to deal with all the rants, complaints, resistances.
Correct, and the news media selectively interview and quote “experts” in the same way. To voice the interviewer’s own opinions for pay, or in other words, astroturfing.
consulting has always seemed like more of a retirement plan than a career to me. My grandfather worked in labs and institutes for about 40 years before retiring and doing consulting and I intend to follow a similar path.
That's what it should be - or if not a retirement plan, it's the next step up after accumulating enough experience in a field. But these days kids go straight to the big consultancy firms from Uni and all they have to hand is theory and they're next to useless. I'm an independent consultant who spent over a decade in my field working my way up from near the bottom to management level, and I've done another decade in consultancy since. A big part of the reason I went into it was because I was working with consultants who had no idea what they were talking about and were just trying to apply theory. A mix of both is the best solution and I definitely wouldn't call consultancy a retirement plan because the monetary rewards are huge and should be sought earlier.
He articulated his thoughts so well here. I will always remember this message from Steve. The fruit analogy has persuaded me to pursue my own business idea and own my recommendations instead of taking a safer route in consulting. It’s funny that he mentioned a banana before an apple. I’ll let you know what the fruit tastes like when my time is done as well Steve! 🍎 🍌
With more than 25 years in tech, I have been saying something similar. Most consultants aren't around long enough to learn from their mistakes. Tech consulting should be an area experienced, battle hardened professionals move into - not graduates imo.
I've done both. Consulting and sitting around maintaining the project long term. Consulting came second. In Engineering you get tired of knowing the decisions you are forced to make are bad. The people you work with aren't very skilled or don't care. The company wants to save money and so they hire inexpensive Engineers lacking experience. You get sick of it. And Consulting allows you to break away from these bad decisions. If companies stuck to Jobs advice to "Hire smart people so they can tell us what to do", I'd work for them. They don't. They cut costs. They cut corners. And the Engineer gets blamed. No thanks. I'll stick to consulting.
Fix for that is only work for companies that do product methodology. Projects lead to a lot of waste and quite a bit of orphaned and unsupported tech that maybe shouldn’t even exist. My past 2 companies have been product team based and it’s honestly a totally different experience than typical lumbering corporate America.
A consultant can come in and almost be a 3rd eye to your blind side on any areas in your business that you may be overlooking. Even if they aren't "competent" at getting the job done. I recently created an estimator training for construction using ChatGPT 4o & Synthesia AI. That alone helped with their hiring process considering they have a decent turnover rate. But what do I know 🤷🏾♂
True in the ownership aspect, but I would say that a good consultant is a good listener first, and after having listened to hundreds or thousands of employees and owners, from a multitude of companies and industries, a good consultant can present ideas and perspective that would otherwise be hidden, due to that wider field of experience. It is easy to get tunnel-vision in any field, and great value can be added from a good consultant. If the payment for consultancy service is connected to results of implementation, or stock-options, the ownership, lyability and invested interest can be more connected. I am speaking both as an entrepreneur and consultant, with a father having the same mix..
Agree on the payment part, it feels weird that consultancy firms typically charges one-off project-based payments instead. Guessed it was a way to keep the independent and "professional" image
Makes sense, why pay for a perspective that the people working on the problem already have? Then again, I do believe that a consultant with some prior experience across multiple stages of development and implementation, stands a better chance of perceiving problems and offering solutions. As for the payment reflecting the contribution, what better way to make sure you get what you pay for, just makes sense. Only reason to forgoe that and pay fixed fees, is CORRUPTION. Fixed fees allow a company to hire an outside consultant (for any amount of money, tax deductible as business expense) who is often an ex politician who pushed for bills in favour of the company, perfectly legal. If consulting fees were to be customarily dependant upon the results of the consult, fixed fee cases would stick out. Majority of small companies, tend to adopt practices held by the large ones, believing that they are sound, based on the success of said large companies, while ignoring the fact that their situations are fundamentaly different.
I too am both a software developer and a presales consultant. I think it's just different kinds of ownership. As an engineer, yes you own the product, but as a consultant, you own the customer. If you mess up your recommendations, you are just as liable to the customer, which can often be many times harder to fix. Skillsets required are also different. Consultants need to be very effective at translating technical jargon into laymen concepts and finding cost-effective solutions that fit, whereas engineers can typically afford to babble in native tech-speak. Steve is just pandering to his own ego here - of course it's cool to say, I was part of the team that built the product, and hence I've earned my stripes to consult on it - but not everyone can master the discipline of both engineering and business communication like Steve has. I've seen what happens too many times when you put an engineer in front of a group of corporates in suits.
I’ve worked with many consultants over a very long career in manufacturing management and IT, even hired some myself in spite of my prior experiences. I have never seen one add value.
He was absolutely right here. There is something inherently irresponsible in consulting, because you are detached from what happens to the company in the long run. On the other hand, I must say I have seen the same lack of responsability in many tech start-ups, where people come just to get experience and some fancy title: many poor decision are taken by people who already know that in 1-2 years will be already working somewhere else and not paying for the consequences of their poor decisions. That's unfortunately the world we live in.
So glad I found this….I’ve been saying this to the C levels for years….no one listened. Tens of millions of fees to the consulting companies later, well what have we learned? Exactly the same things we all knew about, albeit packaged in a nicer way and delivered by people in suits and Rolexes.
@@donniea5058 exactly that! The people that have helped built the organisation over the years were given the silent treatment and given the job to simply ‘hand over’ all the vital information to the consultants for them to put their rubber stamps and branding on it.
This always baffles me... consultants at big companies are 24-26, do not have real experience, do not know how to run a business and what they know is on the very scratch surface... what do they consult?
he's right about consulting not really able to see things through to the end but consulting also allows us to see so much more of the industry. I worked in simulation consulting (Finite Element Analysis) and in that world, work in one company doing one type of product will drastically limit my growth trajectory. again, he's right that if I don't see things all the way through, I also miss important stuff.
This is the real loss in tech companies not paying their internal promotions equal to their external hires. It encourages young developers and engineers to bounce around different companies, where you don't get to see things through
@@LtW00dy It does. Basically, you are not at the receiving end. If the company fails or things go wrong then you are not at fault and will simply move on to the next company.
@@DanielRomero thats for juniors and mid level who are basically working for managed service consultancies in operations. Very different from being the SME delivering complex projects.
Getting in consultants or "specialised" IT contractors often seemed like a slap in the face to me. Despite the skills of the contractor or consultants, it takes time to learn how the company they are consulting works for. As far as the IT work goes, I always wondered if it was not a better idea to choose some of the existing team to learn about whatever it was management had decided to implement and backfill by hiring someone more junior (and therefore cheaper) on a renewable contract. Surely it is easier for someone to learn about one product in a given amount of time than it is for someone to learn how your department works in the same amount of time?
That is exactly was I used to do at my previous company and it allowed you to gain a lot of experience in difference products/technologies at the same time that the rest of the colleagues and hence the company retained part of that knowledge too. Hire external people for most of the projects is just dumb
I've done both. Product for longer than being a consultant. But consulting is by far my favourite. For pure exposure to variety and awesome people. At least in my experience the types of companies who are self aware enough to hire consultants are usually doing good work. And I'm still very much learning about providing effective feedback. Because you see plenty of know it all consultants who give an opinion without having to see it implemented. It's why I like longer gigs because in a former life I was involved with leading technical teams and going live was the best part of the grind.
reminds of skin the of the game by Nassim Taleb...same thesis. point could be made about politicians and not having to be accountable for their actions since they're not usually stakeholders in what they vote on. great point from Jobs
I don't think Jobs said that you should not use consultants. It is great if they have an idea, but tell you how to implement the idea, I don't think that they are suited to do that.
Steve was spot on! This was at time when many top tier graduates chose either investment banking or consulting! and today Top Tier chose to go into Tech or startup tech!
He is of course completely correct, a consultant will never understand a business as well as its own employees. However, I feel he has missed the utility of a good consultant; a good consultant will find inspiration for change through what company employees suggest and build on those suggestions. Sometimes it just takes a fresh perspective/outside view to do what a company knows it should have been doing from the start!
I am not sure. I work for a company with employees who basically never worked somewhere else. It´s a big company and that is really an issue, as they really are lacking inspiration... At least from an organizational point-of-view is is a real shit-show
The rough transcript... "How many of you are from consulting? Oh that's bad. You should do something. No seriously, I don't think there nothing inherently evil in consulting, I think that without owning something over an extended period of time, like a few years, where one has a change to take responsibility for one's recommendations, where one has to see one's recommendations through all action states and accumulate scare tissue for those mistakes and to picks oneself up off the ground and dust oneself off one learns a fraction of what one can. Coming in and making recommendations and not owning the results, not owning the implementation I think is a faction of the value and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get better. You do get a broad cut at companies but it's very thin, it's like a picture of a banana, you might get a very accurate picture but its only 2 dimensions, and without the experience of actually doing it you never get 3 dimensional, so you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends, I've worked in bananas, I've worked in peaches, I've worked in grapes, but you never really taste it, that is what I think."
Agreed that execution experience is key. You get that also by auditing bad situations in consulting. The accumulated experience is incomparable to learning execution mistakes by doing them.
Consultants often have 100 employers, not one and not subject to the will of 1 set of incompetent managers. In niche areas can gather experience at a rate you cannot get in an corporation. The question is who do you want on your team? Someone that read about, seen it, or did it. Hence the real value of a consultant. He is right about a lot of things, but what he doesn’t mention is most companies are not like Apple and don’t have the same resources internally.
If you come from a field such as manufacturing and become a consultant wouldn’t you have already tasted the “fruit”? As a consultant you’re just sharing the “fruit” so others and experience what you know.
As long as the consultants are on implementation side of work meaning basically a product. though as an outsider their holistic angle is still limited for example the business planning part. No company will share too much secrets!
If you're a management consultant, or a change consultant, or a consultant who specialises in an essentially established product, sure. The answer is 'yes'. But with a company such as Apple, the "fruit" is constantly changing. The development of every new product is an opportunity to dive into and experience fully as an engineer or developer, or it's an opportunity to experience just a 2D picture of it as a consultant.
Amazing that people knew about Skin In The Game before the term got coined. This reinstates how elemental the idea of SITG is. Should be taught in every MBA class to enTrEprEneUrS
As a consultant, pay for follow up work and you'll get it. Also after hearing about how you'd rather the bananas be made of cardboard filled with syrup instead of an actual banana to save on cost I don't need to know how it tastes before I bounce.
Also, working for companies like ***, you lose your mind and your soul. Then they'll kick you out once you're broken and you'll have nothing to show for. That's the most dramatic part of this "2D picture" problem.
The problem with this perspective is that it assumes that consultants don't do long-term implementation. The deeper you get into your career, the more likely it is that you're managing long-term client relationships and living with your client's issues over the long haul. One size does not fit all.
EXACTLY. This is what I was thinking the whole time. I’m sure during the time this was filmed consultants were maybe more detached from the end product, they would sit in their chairs and tell business owners what to do. But especially in the current market a consultant is a lot of the times hired on almost as an employee. Has to integrate their plan and see it through and report on the results.
Agreed , that's the same exact thing i say about business consultants , i call it fake career , besides they cannot be fully trusted simply because they sell the same ideas to everyone else therefore business consulting companies do play a major role in devastating markets , big firms should have their own private consultants who have the real experience it takes for it
Funny side story. Many big companies started doing exactly this during the last decade. This is especially a thing in car manufacturing. They started consulting firms within their organisation with highly educated people in all disciplines which are consulting exclusively for them. e.g. Mercedes Benz did this.
I think about the worst form of consultant is the management consultant. What greater failure in an organisation than the fact that those managing it believe they're not competent to do so, so call in people to help them do their job. Anyone else not competent at their job would simply be fired - the correct course of action. Of course, the other reason to bring in consultants (and I've seen it done) is to pay them to legitimise what you already wanted to do anyway. Ie, by having an 'independent expert' third party say what it is that you want to do, you can say that the course of action is not merely your whim, but based on 'expert advice'.
Or, arguably the most common reason, to get broader industry insights that just can't be found inhouse. Like Steve points out they have many "pictures on their wall" that management can use as additional data and reference point to form their own opinion.
@@dhirajmeenavilli5508 If they were, wouldn't they be the most credible person to speak on the matter instead of everyone shitting on each other over something Steve Jobs said? I've worked for various companies and some of them swear management consultants are the devil's spawn (for the same complaints above - only offer advice but don't have accountability, only there to fire people, etc.) while others repeatedly go back to management consultants year after year. Management consulting is very broad - cost optimization where people get laid off is only 1 type of work they do. A lot of the time firms want to enter markets, analyze productivity, analyze profits, plan branch opening, etc. they will rely on management consulting firms. The shitty projects where you bring in McKinsey to fire 10% of your workforce, or the type where you bring in suits only for them to relay to management what employees have been trying to say for years - are just shitty projects pitched by shitty managers. Same can be said about many other industries like real estate development and gentrification. You can't just make blanketed statements and sneer at people who work in the industry like that. If Hazir is knowledgeable, you should be interested in what they have to say
One-dimensional and shallow analysis. You are failing to acknowledge factors such as lack of resources, lack of time, lack of skills, lack of culture and so many more. If what you said was true, no company would ever go bankrupt or fail to implement any strategy because they would simply "be good at their jobs". Extrapolating your analogy, does this apply to science as well? No need to co-authoring or peer-reviewing since scientists should just be competent to do science right! Because by the way, that's precisely the scope of some engagements (co-authoring in house strategy work, peer reviewing in house strategy and so on). Now I do think Steve Jobs has a point and it's very much true. Consultants who exit to the Industry often have hard times "adapting to reality" and getting things done at first. The same way "Pure Industry" people might have hard times looking at unexplored broader scenarios with incomplete information and high uncertainty for example. We all need each other one way or another.
Steve isn’t wrong. There is a big risk hiring pure strategy consultants. What he didn’t address, and I see few, if any comments mentioning it, is there are consultant firms that do strategy and implementation. I’m lucky enough to be in one of these firms where I have the opportunity to practice what I preach. He’s right though, because I see it too, it’s important to have implementation experience.
There's implementation, and then there's You Build It You Own It-style operation where the solution collides with the real world, where you have to live with the real-world consequences of the many micro- and macro-decisions that were made in the implementation. That is where the real lessons are learned.
I don't understand how you can be a consultant right out of college. The only people I've ever paid to consult with are people with years more experience than me in the field Im trying to do something in.
Most of the consultants I know have spent many years working on projects E2E before consulting. I think Job's analogy was in itself 2D in relation to consultants.
He's quite accurate. He identifies worthy only when it's associated with creation. & we at consulting see our worth by assistance & analysis. Tbh, that's how much only I'd prefer relating to businesses coz man, detatched understanding fits some of us better.
I agree with him but that is actually a strength that an outside consultant brings to a company. They aren't affected by the corporate culture, they don't have scar tissue from past failures at the company so they won't be biased toward one thing. They also aren't swayed as much by corporate politics. (Yes a different set of politics, but not the usual ones.) When used effectively they can work quite well in identifying new things you should do, things you should not do, and even when they agree with management, there is a benefit. Less risk.
I've got clients that I've been working with, doing long-term consulting and living with every single one of my technical decisions. This just assumes that every consultant is on a 3-month contract and then leaves.
It's weird, today I've spent many years consulting and we see our recommendations through all the way to the implementation and even give hyper care after the fact to ensure our recommendations and solutions are successful. Has this not always been the case in consulting? Or is this not the case for all consulting?
@@elqord.1118 I work for big corporate, with the absolute largest enterprises in the country, as well as some of the largest federal organizations. But, there are obviously an infinite amount of workstreams that could be consulted on, so maybe we just do it differently in this stream. Either way, it's obvious many do it differently.
Do you live and feel the experience of those deliverables? In Software the idea is to plan it, built it and run it. The focus is on running it. You have to live with the things you have built and bear the consequences of maintenance and new features with the architecture and coding you implemented.
I think it’s the perspective and how badly as an organisation you want to adapt to new processes and change! Change is a bus which needs both permanent and consultant to come and unite with the same goal! It’s a cultural shift. I am a consultant who owns up my mistake and attempt the initiatives. When shit hit the roof I jump in and fix the problem without pointing fingers! All these things are a topic when you have a team not motivated to do their best! If you think a permanent person is very good at their job, pay them and take care of them! Reward and recognize truely their contribution If you think consultant is going beyond his role and wants to make the change. Give him the opportunity and credit! In the end if things fail we’re all in this together!
I do not understand here why the fact that this consultant is running and trying to grow his/her own business is ignored. He/she is also going through challenges, finding solutions, to create a succesful business and make ground in the specific industry. Consulting also requires a bit of creativity. To design an effective business model, be a great leader for employees. What is more some of them do not content themselves with only one business but launch other businessses. They also get to taste their fruit(s) at the end of the day.
Im saving these for later: Oftentimes companies listen more to consultants than their own employees. I agree with Jobs’ assessment. However, I found that companies tended to value the ideas of consultants over the ideas of their employees. If push ever came to shove, the consultant’s advice was taken and the employee was ignored or certainly underrated. So, if you have enough experience in an industry, it is far less stressful being a consultant. You also have the advantage of being above the fray when it comes to office politics. And this, in spite of the inherent depth and value of loyal employees’ ownership of systems, often creates problems and issues. I've done both. Consulting and sitting around maintaining the project long term. Consulting came second. In Engineering you get tired of knowing the decisions you are forced to make are bad. The people you work with aren't very skilled or don't care. The company wants to save money and so they hire inexpensive Engineers lacking experience. You get sick of it. And Consulting allows you to break away from these bad decisions. If companies stuck to Jobs advice to "Hire smart people so they can tell us what to do", I'd work for them. They don't. They cut costs. They cut corners. And the Engineer gets blamed. No thanks. A good consultant is a good listener first, and after having listened to hundreds or thousands of employees and owners, from a multitude of companies and industries, a good consultant can present ideas and perspective that would otherwise be hidden, due to that wider field of experience. It is easy to get tunnel-vision in any field, and great value can be added from a good consultant. If the payment for consultancy service is connected to results of implementation, or stock-options, the ownership, lyability and invested interest can be more connected. I am speaking both as an entrepreneur and consultant, with a father having the same mix..
I think Job was right when he said it. But it's no longer true now and it's partially his fault. You no longer have any ability to maintain things long term. You might get a year down the line on a project if you're lucky. Then someone way up the food chain decides things aren't going the way they want, and there's a new idea, a new direction, and of course a new buzzword. This self styled Steve Jobs, who is actually more Robert California, has the one idea that will save the company, at least for the next 9-12 months. After that the board or someone higher up the food chain gets a whiff that things aren't going well, this new buzzword hasn't saved the day. After much disruption and much reorganization (or disorganization) an unceremonious email 'Robert California's' last day is today. And in comes a new savior, with a new buzzword, another self styled Steve Jobs ready to be disruptive to the marketplace, but in reality only to be disruptive to employees. And the pattern repeats, over and over again, across industries, across companies, across borders.
The biggest problem woth companies are engineers themselves mostly..I worked for a science company and frankly they listened too much to engineer types who often have absolutely zero practical experience in their field..but they're tasked with designing a system with zero idea of the practical application of it.. products should never be given solely to an engineer.. projects have to include hands on people..I have said since Moses wore short pants that the education and design
Executives hire consultants either to execute some project they dont wanna hire someone for or because they want someone to blame for tough/unpopular decisions
I have sen this many times. The company has a problem and it brings in consultants and pay them a lot. They come up with a solution. Many of the employees with long experience who actually does the work see problems with this solution, but those opinions are ignored. The result: All the changes and extra work (usually with ridiculous deadlines) falls on the shoulders of the employees. If it's a success both the consultants and the employees get a pat on the back. If it turns out to be a disaster it's the emplyees fault. Almost every problem can be solved if the leaders would ask the employees and care enough to listen to what they have to say. Bring together all the people that the problem affects and share ideas and views. I can not understand why an outsiders opinion is more important than that of a experienced employees. What's also funny is that in many cases the consultants ask the employees and then present the solution as if they came up with it themselves.
Agree 100%, I saw this at my workplace over the years I was there too. Communication is so important, but so many people would rather just absolve themselves of responsibility and have someone else direct their action. My theory was because if leadership listened and acted on the reasoning of their employees and it still failed, that leader would have to be responsible for the failed outcome whereas if you bring in a contracted party and it fails you can say you were listening to experts so you can't be held accountable. It takes a genuine leader to cut through that and actually take responsibility and inspire people to work and build that trust, but those people are few and far between the rest who only want to look after themselves and are happy to throw anyone else under the bus. Given how little loyalty a company has towards it's employees, it's hard not to blame them for being that way (as much as it sucks) as most of them started at the bottom are are used to be treating as the potential scapegoat. I hope I never have to work and navigate that kind of workplace and politics again.
I agree @tompski - as the employees have invested many years of their life in the company, so they have something at stake in contributing their ideas, and they care about their workplace. They also have been thinking about the problems in the company for a long time as well; so they often have enough insight in know how to fix those problems. But often management want to justify their higher wage, and take on all of the direction, and decision making, themselves - as this is the cliche of what a leader is. But a good leader finds a way to incorporate other people's ideas, and make them part of the success of the company.
"But a good leader finds a way to incorporate other people's ideas, and make them part of the success of the company." In the corporate model, this is IP theft and corporate sabotage. Outside of the Kafkaesque capitalist world, it's good sense. If business actually shifted to a worker cooperative world, where workers are directly incomed for THEIR ideas, there would be no need for Messiah figures. But people are more loyal to a messianical fantasy more than reality it seems. Shame that our puritanical roots appear once more, looking for someone other than the workers to take the lead.
Some good points here. I used to work for a large UK utility company and we spent a fortune on consultants to provide quick solutions (at high cost) but because they didn’t understand the industry context all that well we’d often end up with “solutions” that we couldn’t actually implement. One of the worst examples is when we paid a company £15 million for a software solution that didn’t even work and we had to scrap it and write the whole investment off
Yes but none of the management accepted the blame for the failure and that is the whole point, layers of protection. It was just the bad consultancy company at fault, the decision to use them was made in good faith etc.
@@XenonJohnD true it wasn't just the consultancy at fault. My team were heavily involved in the project to start with and alarm bells started ringing almost straight away. We tried to raise our concerns to management but were ignored. In fact we got told we weren't invited to meetings anymore due to our "negative" attitude, but in the end we were proven right about how bad the software actually was. None of our management took the blame or suffered any consequences because of it though
people don't choose to be consultants. companies do it so they don't have to pay benefits this video is very old at the time consulting meant something different
He's talking about academic consultants. I worked in the field from the very bottom to the top then became consultant. And yes he has a great point, because many consultants are just applying academic knowledge without context.
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I worked for 15 years as an engineer for 1 organization and Jobs is 100% right. Much of what I learned came as a result of having to live with the decisions I made on behalf of my customer. When it broke, they came to me and I had to fix it. And when I designed it next time during the next iteration, it didn't break. My ability to design good systems increased dramatically as a result.
I think Steve here is too hard on consultants. Of course, I say this as a consultant.
I am a civil engineering consultant. Municipalities and States hire me to do design work for them exactly because they don't have the in-house expertise to do what I do, which is very niche. How could they be expected to do what I do? In fact, it would be a tremendous waste of their money and resources to keep someone on staff that solely does what I do for the once-in-a-decade time they need the work done. In this situation, I do work all around the region with my clients when it's time to do those designs.
I design traffic signal systems - not the individual traffic lights, but whole systems. I also do individual signals, but mostly systems. This is only comes up in a mid-size municipality every decade or so, therefore it's not financially sensical to keep someone on staff who has this expertise.
In this way, I am not the only villain that Jobs says I am. I provide an essential service that Jobs, who I consider a layman in this manner, takes for granted.
@@craigfdavis I think was thinking more along the lines of professional management consulting firms. Not technical/engineering consulting or similar consultants with direct experience & specialists.
Good point
@@jimihendrixx11 That may be the case and it's a good point. I do my job as a consultant as if I am employed WITH the client in their business. Because, at the end of the day, yes, I can't claim ownership of the asset itself, but in lieu of that, my professional reputation is the commodity here, and without that, I have absolutely nothing.
@@craigfdavis To be fair, Jobs didn’t say you were a villain; he said you don’t have as many opportunities to learn as an “owner.” Also, he was (obviously) generalizing, and whenever you generalize, you know that there are a lot of specific cases where your generalization doesn’t apply.
I work in IT. My company decided to spend close to 30 MILLION DOLLARS on consultants instead of hiring more help (which would have been a fraction of that). CIO was an idiot (got fired this last week). Consultants walked away from a fire with their wallets full and left us with the mess. I quit shortly afterwards.
even worse sometimes it's the CIO force their direct report to follow the lead of the consultant when their direct report is more experienced, just because the CIO don't want any trouble
CIO might have had mates at the consultanty firm too, or took a backhanded commission
What is the name of the company ? What do they do ?
Didn't you also walk away from the fire
@@odds87Normally 10-20% finders fee
This is honestly applicable to most things in life. You can have all the knowledge and theories about something, but until you experience it yourself you never 100% knew it
True with everything that you read, you try and haven't gotten to the depth of it. IMO SJ has broadly classified consultants, and not touched upon this point. An individual's need, passion and ability to learn is what drives things more so than one being a consultant or not.
Marys room experiment
I think it's a mixture of internalization, what our takeaways are from the knowledge that's imparted to us, as well as developing our own translation/interpretation of how we express said takeaways that's the third dimension to Jobs's analogy of a picture of fruit.
Depth is really a hard concept to express.
Even if we experience things ourselves, there is no way to know every single thing about what is happening and even if we quest towards that, it can distract us from other things that we should be seeing otherwise we are super injured or dead then ultimately we are into the afterlife experience forever. Still though, if the afterlife was indeed better with the deserved rules or not, it would be good people had no idea how to do everything "right" to not have died.
yep. business professors who haven't started or managed a business are all too common.
Jobs wasn't really that technical, nor he was a scientific/math guy , but still had a remarkably bright, consistent logical and analytical mind with the ability the put complex real world problems into simple words.
Just brilliant!
He had standards, a mind of his own, he obsessed with elegance and beauty, and he held the standards
The problem is not Consultants taking money for Powerpoints, the problem is Managers giving away money for Powerpoints.
They don't give money for power points they give money for cover.
So consultant comes in and says you should do X. Management could have done that but they're scared of pissing off the board or scaring anyone.
So they wrote off a million dollars worth of lunches and power points and they say hey we have this data (quiet part is we already had that) and it says we should make this big change.
If big change works your internal management takes credit. If big change fails it's the consultant's fault.
@dylanbaker5766 that's actually a brilliant analysis.
@@dylanbaker5766 True for the mckinsey and other management consulting. But the big part of the consulting is low payed engineers basically running the company, they are not just power point makers. It is interesting for companies as they can cut them easily if needed so no complaint, strike, salary discussion ... The point he is making/the way I understand - Consulting is a shallow experience for the consultant and they should seek for more, he is not doing a critic of their work.
@@dylanbaker5766 corporate decision making in a nutshell.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. Steve Jobs was not aware that his successor was expanding the footprint of their SAP platform with consultants and contractors to build out the worlds biggest consumer electronics computer company supply chain and order management software and that means scores of Big 4 consultants.
Bananas, peaches, grapes. This guy should start a fruit company
Yep, like an apple company or something like that
@@webstime1 Oh boy you're in for a treat 😂😂
How much can one banana cost?
Ever heard of APPLE phones? Jeez, some people just don't know pop culture...
@@budgetbot1118 bro he’s just JOKING of course he knows apple
This man knew decades ago that a era of social media "gurus" were coming.
yeah... cause he sold them laptops ;)
This is more than that tho. Very different from someone like a gary vee type selling platitudes. he's giving actual advice to specific professions on being more hands on in their design approach which is absolutely correct.
Too bad he paid so much attention to 'health gurus' instead of real doctors who would have saved his life.
There's always been people like that.
They now run the country.
I have 20 years in manufacturing and 22 since as a consultant so I've pretty much seen it all. Jobs is right for consultants without significant industry experience. Those of us with arrows in our backs and substantial scar tissue who become consultants are usually better at understanding where our clients are coming from and what issues they may face. So we tend to give them better advice.
Beware of the big consultancies; they hire MBAs right out of school and throw them at you for $600/hr. While these kids are smart, they're knowledge-free and are learning at your expense. Make sure you know what you're getting when you hire a consultant.
This! Hire consultants that have walked a mile in your shoes.
You missed the point.
Interesting. I work with the marketing department of several consulting agencies. Surely this scenario Steve tells, no longer applies to the worlds leading organizations? Beccause those I talk to, all have developers in their organizations. They all have partner programs with their vendors. Its no longer just a case of consulting being purely a sales division? I also happen to work with several of the vendors, none of them would be even half as successfull if it wasnt for consultants. Interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
You still work?
@@StenoTimmy sounds like it was actually you that missed the point
"like having a picture of food on the wall...but never having tasted it." great analogy.
P
Food is a metaphor
I found his analogies here rather clumsy. Not the most well spoken moment for him
Surprised he didn’t reference apples :P
You don't need to taste a banana to know that this is a banana. A picture it's enough for me
"… not owning the results, not owning the implementation, I think is a faction of the value and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get better." Ownership is important for setting clear accountability and responsibility to generate better results.
Thats a consultants goal. Bleed the contract and keep you wanting just a little bit more... forever.
As a consultant myself, this is very true. I find myself lucky that my current client has kept me around for about 5 years now and I have been able to see the fruits of my labor blossom and some come apart. Prior clients I have zero insight to if I have any lasting impact.
This is what I was hoping to find- consulting to create partnerships and review/refine/own your work over many years for lasting effects with the companies you've partnered with. I feel this is the happy medium between the consulting Jobs speaks about and being internal to the company with needs.
What do you do day to day?
@@charleskavoukjian3441system architect/developer/data analyst in commodities
@@charleskavoukjian3441Make powerpoints
At least you’re honest and probably good enough that they kept using you.
Been through lot’s of consultant engagements over the years and they were always a disaster.
At times we found savings despite the consultants but they and the VP that hired them attributed the ideas to the consultants so that they don’t look like total idiots.
Respect to anyone who got into this room. This guy was pure gold.
I agree with Jobs’ assessment. Having been on both sides of the consulting equation, however, I found that companies tended to value the ideas of consultants over the ideas of their employees. If push ever cams to shove, the consultant’s advice was taken and the employee’s was ignored or certainly underrated. So, if you have enough experience in an industry, it is far less stressful being a consultant. You also have the advantage of being above the fray when it comes to office politics. And this, in spite of the inherent depth and value of loyal employees’ ownership of systems, problems and issues.
If the employees were adequate, the consultants would never be called.
@@conservativeasiatic9752 Unless budgets needed to be spent. Or management was not as sharp as it should be. Or any of a myriad of other reasons.
Haha, that’s why I decided to do tech consulting for a period of time. I would give the exact same advice and suggestion but if it didn’t come from a consultant, my management wouldn’t buy it. I’ve always felt that since consultants don’t have skin in the game, management never feels threatened with someone below them in the corporate hierarchy to potentially know what to do.
What you are describing is actually a quite known bias. If you pay money for a recommendation or guidance you are far more likely to follow it (I know employees get paid as well but their payment isnt linked as directly to a result).
That is why so many people still buy so many books about business and money.
The knowledge is in the internet but many people can follow advice out of books easier that advice they got for free
It's weird because in non-profits it's almost the opposite. The employees have no ownership and typical tenure is like 6 months. So the consultants are often the longest running people, so the responsibility gets dropped on them for basically everything.
My Father taught me perhaps the most valuable lesson in life: “The man who’s never made a mistake, has never made anything!”
But like the best lessons, it took me years to fully understand his wisdom. Thank you Dad.
So true. I think that I've learnt more in my career than many others exactly, because I experimented and made mistakes. It of course helps to observe others as they are making mistakes. Then you learn from their mistakes as well. 🙂
Consulting is a great career if you do it from within a company that primarily makes a product. For example a consultant in a software company works with the customers to make them successful with the software. The customers don’t go away, just transition to support. You are still accountable long term for the customer’s success.
That sounds more like sales or something else.
It is sales and unfortunately they get called as consultants
I’m a tech consultant and trust me when I say this, we bullshit and re-contract a lot. Cannot wait to launch my own business and quit, I have realized that the corporate world is not for me.
As a (Junior) consultant I totally agree. I don’t understand how the customer companies still buy the bullshitting!
By their very nature consulting companies don't want your "problem" to go away. It's like pharmaceutical companies being more than happy to develop "treatments" but they're reluctant to develop a "cure" because it would be a one-time thing.
Not all of us. Long term contracts see it through to the end.
Here in UK our NHS spend/waste so much money on consultants for management/tech.
variable expense
He describes exactly why I like consulting. No responsibility for big money and when I’m off I’m free.
The definition of selfish
@@andybaldman
Exactly!
@360 noscope spoonclank When people are selfish it ultimately hurts others.
@@andybaldman Congrats bro you just defined a word and added nothing
@@robco1727 I'm sorry you don't understand my point. But that's ok.
His hand gestures are phenomenal.... try & do that just by yourself alone..... & then realise he used them fluidly... in " live " presentations to......thousands.... RESPECT !
From a company who can't afford to lose $1 mil, we have lost $20 to $30 million dollars from having a restructure with poor consultants, he's 100% right.
Liar
@@bigdog2432 What a strange person you are.
If you lost 20 to 30 and are still running then surely you could afford to lose more than 1 mil lol
Often it’s the fault of management why you lose money, not from the consultants. Sometimes the management want to change something they do not have a clue of and that’s the result.
But can you restructure without consultants/advisors?
Worked 10 years in steady jobs and recently swiftched to consulting, but not completely standard as I am fulltime employed in a tech company, and they send me out to customers to consult in short cycles. It’s awesome. As someone else said, learning to listen is key. Often I collect questions that I have to reaerch myself, which means gathering insight from colleagues and building an internal network. I often wonder what happens to the projects that I work on, but sometimes customers do take initiative to come back and say that they were happy. My sense of continuity comes from the fact that because I work with my company’s tech all the time, I gather valuable feedback that I can feed back to the other engineers. That means that if I do my job right, some of the problems that I face this year, I won’t ever have to face again. I expect to do this for a while now, maybe years.
We're talking strategy consultants here, not technical subject matter experts.
Agreed problemat1que. I've known some great technical SME-type consultants during my career. I've never met a single competent strategy consultant. Not one. Seen millions of dollars wasted chasing shiny new "north stars" that never work out.
Do we work at the same company? 😮
😉
After many years in business, I finally learned (from a consultant) that consultants are often hired to cook up and justify whatever conclusions are wanted by the person who has the mandate to hire them. So even worse than pontificating on industry or domain matters where they may have less expertise than their clients, they are used to manipulate or eliminate opponents in organizations. A bit like think tanks or lobbyists ranting about "data". This might explain why many consultants end up working in senior government positions.
That´s what they are paid for, true. The other thing are very specialized consultancies who basically get paid for industry espionage. What else would you want to call it, when they do the 10th implementation of a CRM in the car industry? Oh, could you tell us how ... are doing it? Sure, no problem ;)
As someone working in consulting, I can comfirm this. In my biggest project I had to mediate between the global organization and the local representatives from the different markets where the company operates. "Mediating" here basically meant to push back on what was coming from the local organizations and enable what the global organization wanted to achieve. In this way they achieve what they want but do not put their faces and the consultants have to deal with all the rants, complaints, resistances.
Correct, and the news media selectively interview and quote “experts” in the same way. To voice the interviewer’s own opinions for pay, or in other words, astroturfing.
You people are awful
this is so true. I went from a product company to consulting firm, although it is very high paid, I want to go back to product company now.
consulting has always seemed like more of a retirement plan than a career to me. My grandfather worked in labs and institutes for about 40 years before retiring and doing consulting and I intend to follow a similar path.
That's what it should be - or if not a retirement plan, it's the next step up after accumulating enough experience in a field. But these days kids go straight to the big consultancy firms from Uni and all they have to hand is theory and they're next to useless.
I'm an independent consultant who spent over a decade in my field working my way up from near the bottom to management level, and I've done another decade in consultancy since. A big part of the reason I went into it was because I was working with consultants who had no idea what they were talking about and were just trying to apply theory.
A mix of both is the best solution and I definitely wouldn't call consultancy a retirement plan because the monetary rewards are huge and should be sought earlier.
often I have seen companies needing to be told by consultants what their employees have been telling them.
To me, Steve Jobs is a true genius. He articulates his ideas so well.
It's a blessing having subtitles in this
He articulated his thoughts so well here. I will always remember this message from Steve. The fruit analogy has persuaded me to pursue my own business idea and own my recommendations instead of taking a safer route in consulting. It’s funny that he mentioned a banana before an apple. I’ll let you know what the fruit tastes like when my time is done as well Steve! 🍎 🍌
Apple was forbidden fruit for Steve in those years 😂
Good look Rohan. I started my own business many years ago and this advice in the video is so so so good.
Steve was so articulate it blows my mind.
Not really. When you know nobody in the room would dare challenge you, you suddenly become a poet. This is completely unrealistic for 99% of humanity.
@@kendallwi this point you made absolutely has nothing to do with the original poster, absolutely nothing. Steve Jobs was articulate, that’s it.
With more than 25 years in tech, I have been saying something similar. Most consultants aren't around long enough to learn from their mistakes. Tech consulting should be an area experienced, battle hardened professionals move into - not graduates imo.
They way he puts together words in a sentence , my brain chemistry changes
That's a really fancy way of saying," He made me think". Haha
I've done both. Consulting and sitting around maintaining the project long term. Consulting came second. In Engineering you get tired of knowing the decisions you are forced to make are bad. The people you work with aren't very skilled or don't care. The company wants to save money and so they hire inexpensive Engineers lacking experience. You get sick of it. And Consulting allows you to break away from these bad decisions. If companies stuck to Jobs advice to "Hire smart people so they can tell us what to do", I'd work for them. They don't. They cut costs. They cut corners. And the Engineer gets blamed. No thanks. I'll stick to consulting.
Fix for that is only work for companies that do product methodology. Projects lead to a lot of waste and quite a bit of orphaned and unsupported tech that maybe shouldn’t even exist. My past 2 companies have been product team based and it’s honestly a totally different experience than typical lumbering corporate America.
A consultant can come in and almost be a 3rd eye to your blind side on any areas in your business that you may be overlooking. Even if they aren't "competent" at getting the job done.
I recently created an estimator training for construction using ChatGPT 4o & Synthesia AI. That alone helped with their hiring process considering they have a decent turnover rate.
But what do I know 🤷🏾♂
True in the ownership aspect, but I would say that a good consultant is a good listener first, and after having listened to hundreds or thousands of employees and owners, from a multitude of companies and industries, a good consultant can present ideas and perspective that would otherwise be hidden, due to that wider field of experience. It is easy to get tunnel-vision in any field, and great value can be added from a good consultant. If the payment for consultancy service is connected to results of implementation, or stock-options, the ownership, lyability and invested interest can be more connected. I am speaking both as an entrepreneur and consultant, with a father having the same mix..
Agree on the payment part, it feels weird that consultancy firms typically charges one-off project-based payments instead. Guessed it was a way to keep the independent and "professional" image
Makes sense, why pay for a perspective that the people working on the problem already have?
Then again, I do believe that a consultant with some prior experience across multiple stages of development and implementation, stands a better chance of perceiving problems and offering solutions.
As for the payment reflecting the contribution, what better way to make sure you get what you pay for, just makes sense.
Only reason to forgoe that and pay fixed fees, is CORRUPTION.
Fixed fees allow a company to hire an outside consultant (for any amount of money, tax deductible as business expense) who is often an ex politician who pushed for bills in favour of the company, perfectly legal.
If consulting fees were to be customarily dependant upon the results of the consult, fixed fee cases would stick out.
Majority of small companies, tend to adopt practices held by the large ones, believing that they are sound, based on the success of said large companies, while ignoring the fact that their situations are fundamentaly different.
I too am both a software developer and a presales consultant. I think it's just different kinds of ownership. As an engineer, yes you own the product, but as a consultant, you own the customer. If you mess up your recommendations, you are just as liable to the customer, which can often be many times harder to fix. Skillsets required are also different. Consultants need to be very effective at translating technical jargon into laymen concepts and finding cost-effective solutions that fit, whereas engineers can typically afford to babble in native tech-speak. Steve is just pandering to his own ego here - of course it's cool to say, I was part of the team that built the product, and hence I've earned my stripes to consult on it - but not everyone can master the discipline of both engineering and business communication like Steve has. I've seen what happens too many times when you put an engineer in front of a group of corporates in suits.
I’ve worked with many consultants over a very long career in manufacturing management and IT, even hired some myself in spite of my prior experiences. I have never seen one add value.
such a good metaphor, effortless for him
He was absolutely right here. There is something inherently irresponsible in consulting, because you are detached from what happens to the company in the long run. On the other hand, I must say I have seen the same lack of responsability in many tech start-ups, where people come just to get experience and some fancy title: many poor decision are taken by people who already know that in 1-2 years will be already working somewhere else and not paying for the consequences of their poor decisions. That's unfortunately the world we live in.
yup. you summed it up perfectly
But what about their résumé? bad decisions will take a toll on references won't they?
I am a consultant...and I approve of this message.
The legend has it that every consultant in that room left their job after the speech and started their own businesses.
Doing what?
@@gilberttorres8 consulting
@@uzairfarooqui3995 😂😂😂😂
Consulting: If you can't be part of the solution, there's great money in prolonging the problem.
@@robertwalkley4665 for sure you worked with a companies like Accenture, Infosys, Cognizant, bu it's not always like that.
So glad I found this….I’ve been saying this to the C levels for years….no one listened. Tens of millions of fees to the consulting companies later, well what have we learned? Exactly the same things we all knew about, albeit packaged in a nicer way and delivered by people in suits and Rolexes.
I say this all the time. Management brings in consultants to tell them what they refuse to hear from their own people.
@@donniea5058 exactly that! The people that have helped built the organisation over the years were given the silent treatment and given the job to simply ‘hand over’ all the vital information to the consultants for them to put their rubber stamps and branding on it.
Consultants are there to protect managements’ asses.
This always baffles me... consultants at big companies are 24-26, do not have real experience, do not know how to run a business and what they know is on the very scratch surface... what do they consult?
Gross generalization
Consulting is a great racket. You don’t have to risk anything.
🤔 yes your reputation is on the line.
Only your health and time?
@@gilberttorres8 "yes your reputation is on the line." Nah. "My advice was fine, your implementation was faulty."
he's right about consulting not really able to see things through to the end but consulting also allows us to see so much more of the industry. I worked in simulation consulting (Finite Element Analysis) and in that world, work in one company doing one type of product will drastically limit my growth trajectory. again, he's right that if I don't see things all the way through, I also miss important stuff.
A definition I was given of a consultant was "you lend them your watch for them to tell you the time".
This is the real loss in tech companies not paying their internal promotions equal to their external hires. It encourages young developers and engineers to bounce around different companies, where you don't get to see things through
Companies care more about control as long as they make money
You can be a consultant, make recommendations AND see them through too.
Yea. It makes no sense what he just said
@@LtW00dy It does. Basically, you are not at the receiving end. If the company fails or things go wrong then you are not at fault and will simply move on to the next company.
@@DanielRomero thats for juniors and mid level who are basically working for managed service consultancies in operations. Very different from being the SME delivering complex projects.
Getting in consultants or "specialised" IT contractors often seemed like a slap in the face to me.
Despite the skills of the contractor or consultants, it takes time to learn how the company they are consulting works for. As far as the IT work goes, I always wondered if it was not a better idea to choose some of the existing team to learn about whatever it was management had decided to implement and backfill by hiring someone more junior (and therefore cheaper) on a renewable contract.
Surely it is easier for someone to learn about one product in a given amount of time than it is for someone to learn how your department works in the same amount of time?
That is exactly was I used to do at my previous company and it allowed you to gain a lot of experience in difference products/technologies at the same time that the rest of the colleagues and hence the company retained part of that knowledge too.
Hire external people for most of the projects is just dumb
I've done both. Product for longer than being a consultant. But consulting is by far my favourite. For pure exposure to variety and awesome people. At least in my experience the types of companies who are self aware enough to hire consultants are usually doing good work.
And I'm still very much learning about providing effective feedback. Because you see plenty of know it all consultants who give an opinion without having to see it implemented. It's why I like longer gigs because in a former life I was involved with leading technical teams and going live was the best part of the grind.
At the end, when he paused and took a drink of water, I seriously thought he was going to ask, "So, when's lunch?"
"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practise. In practise there is."
Jobs was the master of analogies and metaphors.
reminds of skin the of the game by Nassim Taleb...same thesis. point could be made about politicians and not having to be accountable for their actions since they're not usually stakeholders in what they vote on. great point from Jobs
A consultant came up with the Ipod which helped provide revenue for everything else at apple to occur.
I don't think Jobs said that you should not use consultants. It is great if they have an idea, but tell you how to implement the idea, I don't think that they are suited to do that.
He brilliantly summed it up. Without implementing and owning anything, one cannot learn stuffs.
But you *can* learn almost anything. It's just a very inefficient process.
Steve was spot on! This was at time when many top tier graduates chose either investment banking or consulting! and today Top Tier chose to go into Tech or startup tech!
He is of course completely correct, a consultant will never understand a business as well as its own employees. However, I feel he has missed the utility of a good consultant; a good consultant will find inspiration for change through what company employees suggest and build on those suggestions. Sometimes it just takes a fresh perspective/outside view to do what a company knows it should have been doing from the start!
I am not sure. I work for a company with employees who basically never worked somewhere else. It´s a big company and that is really an issue, as they really are lacking inspiration... At least from an organizational point-of-view is is a real shit-show
Is there a video of the full talk? Where is this from?
The rough transcript...
"How many of you are from consulting? Oh that's bad. You should do something.
No seriously, I don't think there nothing inherently evil in consulting, I think that without owning something over an extended period of time, like a few years, where one has a change to take responsibility for one's recommendations, where one has to see one's recommendations through all action states and accumulate scare tissue for those mistakes and to picks oneself up off the ground and dust oneself off one learns a fraction of what one can.
Coming in and making recommendations and not owning the results, not owning the implementation I think is a faction of the value and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get better.
You do get a broad cut at companies but it's very thin, it's like a picture of a banana, you might get a very accurate picture but its only 2 dimensions, and without the experience of actually doing it you never get 3 dimensional, so you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends, I've worked in bananas, I've worked in peaches, I've worked in grapes, but you never really taste it, that is what I think."
Excellent transcript. Correction: *scar tissue.
Thanks a lot 👍
Agreed that execution experience is key. You get that also by auditing bad situations in consulting. The accumulated experience is incomparable to learning execution mistakes by doing them.
Consultants often have 100 employers, not one and not subject to the will of 1 set of incompetent managers. In niche areas can gather experience at a rate you cannot get in an corporation. The question is who do you want on your team? Someone that read about, seen it, or did it. Hence the real value of a consultant. He is right about a lot of things, but what he doesn’t mention is most companies are not like Apple and don’t have the same resources internally.
Such a beautiful mind
If you come from a field such as manufacturing and become a consultant wouldn’t you have already tasted the “fruit”? As a consultant you’re just sharing the “fruit” so others and experience what you know.
As long as the consultants are on implementation side of work meaning basically a product. though as an outsider their holistic angle is still limited for example the business planning part. No company will share too much secrets!
If you're a management consultant, or a change consultant, or a consultant who specialises in an essentially established product, sure. The answer is 'yes'. But with a company such as Apple, the "fruit" is constantly changing. The development of every new product is an opportunity to dive into and experience fully as an engineer or developer, or it's an opportunity to experience just a 2D picture of it as a consultant.
Did consulting for 16 years. He's not wrong.
Amazing that people knew about Skin In The Game before the term got coined. This reinstates how elemental the idea of SITG is. Should be taught in every MBA class to enTrEprEneUrS
Is the entire talk available anywhere? This seems like an information presentation?
As a consultant, pay for follow up work and you'll get it.
Also after hearing about how you'd rather the bananas be made of cardboard filled with syrup instead of an actual banana to save on cost I don't need to know how it tastes before I bounce.
in simple words : experience and feeling it will give you complete information
Also, working for companies like ***, you lose your mind and your soul. Then they'll kick you out once you're broken and you'll have nothing to show for. That's the most dramatic part of this "2D picture" problem.
well... you've got all the cash they paid you for the work you did lol
really good explianation
I could not agree more...
Is there a full length version of this anywhere?
-I´ve worked in bananas, peaches, grapes.
-So, you don´t know how apples taste.
🤣🤣🤣
The problem with this perspective is that it assumes that consultants don't do long-term implementation. The deeper you get into your career, the more likely it is that you're managing long-term client relationships and living with your client's issues over the long haul. One size does not fit all.
EXACTLY. This is what I was thinking the whole time. I’m sure during the time this was filmed consultants were maybe more detached from the end product, they would sit in their chairs and tell business owners what to do. But especially in the current market a consultant is a lot of the times hired on almost as an employee. Has to integrate their plan and see it through and report on the results.
Agreed , that's the same exact thing i say about business consultants , i call it fake career , besides they cannot be fully trusted simply because they sell the same ideas to everyone else therefore business consulting companies do play a major role in devastating markets , big firms should have their own private consultants who have the real experience it takes for it
Funny side story. Many big companies started doing exactly this during the last decade. This is especially a thing in car manufacturing. They started consulting firms within their organisation with highly educated people in all disciplines which are consulting exclusively for them. e.g. Mercedes Benz did this.
The clarity 🫡
I think about the worst form of consultant is the management consultant. What greater failure in an organisation than the fact that those managing it believe they're not competent to do so, so call in people to help them do their job. Anyone else not competent at their job would simply be fired - the correct course of action. Of course, the other reason to bring in consultants (and I've seen it done) is to pay them to legitimise what you already wanted to do anyway. Ie, by having an 'independent expert' third party say what it is that you want to do, you can say that the course of action is not merely your whim, but based on 'expert advice'.
Or, arguably the most common reason, to get broader industry insights that just can't be found inhouse. Like Steve points out they have many "pictures on their wall" that management can use as additional data and reference point to form their own opinion.
@@HazirMagron Are you in management consulting? Hmmmmmmmmmmm
@@dhirajmeenavilli5508 If they were, wouldn't they be the most credible person to speak on the matter instead of everyone shitting on each other over something Steve Jobs said? I've worked for various companies and some of them swear management consultants are the devil's spawn (for the same complaints above - only offer advice but don't have accountability, only there to fire people, etc.) while others repeatedly go back to management consultants year after year.
Management consulting is very broad - cost optimization where people get laid off is only 1 type of work they do. A lot of the time firms want to enter markets, analyze productivity, analyze profits, plan branch opening, etc. they will rely on management consulting firms.
The shitty projects where you bring in McKinsey to fire 10% of your workforce, or the type where you bring in suits only for them to relay to management what employees have been trying to say for years - are just shitty projects pitched by shitty managers. Same can be said about many other industries like real estate development and gentrification. You can't just make blanketed statements and sneer at people who work in the industry like that. If Hazir is knowledgeable, you should be interested in what they have to say
Funny to label as 'independent expert' when in a lot of cases its the mentored work of a fresh graduate
One-dimensional and shallow analysis. You are failing to acknowledge factors such as lack of resources, lack of time, lack of skills, lack of culture and so many more. If what you said was true, no company would ever go bankrupt or fail to implement any strategy because they would simply "be good at their jobs". Extrapolating your analogy, does this apply to science as well? No need to co-authoring or peer-reviewing since scientists should just be competent to do science right! Because by the way, that's precisely the scope of some engagements (co-authoring in house strategy work, peer reviewing in house strategy and so on).
Now I do think Steve Jobs has a point and it's very much true. Consultants who exit to the Industry often have hard times "adapting to reality" and getting things done at first. The same way "Pure Industry" people might have hard times looking at unexplored broader scenarios with incomplete information and high uncertainty for example.
We all need each other one way or another.
Where can I get full video
Steve isn’t wrong. There is a big risk hiring pure strategy consultants. What he didn’t address, and I see few, if any comments mentioning it, is there are consultant firms that do strategy and implementation. I’m lucky enough to be in one of these firms where I have the opportunity to practice what I preach. He’s right though, because I see it too, it’s important to have implementation experience.
There's implementation, and then there's You Build It You Own It-style operation where the solution collides with the real world, where you have to live with the real-world consequences of the many micro- and macro-decisions that were made in the implementation. That is where the real lessons are learned.
I don't understand how you can be a consultant right out of college. The only people I've ever paid to consult with are people with years more experience than me in the field Im trying to do something in.
Most of the consultants I know have spent many years working on projects E2E before consulting. I think Job's analogy was in itself 2D in relation to consultants.
He's quite accurate. He identifies worthy only when it's associated with creation. & we at consulting see our worth by assistance & analysis. Tbh, that's how much only I'd prefer relating to businesses coz man, detatched understanding fits some of us better.
I agree with him but that is actually a strength that an outside consultant brings to a company. They aren't affected by the corporate culture, they don't have scar tissue from past failures at the company so they won't be biased toward one thing. They also aren't swayed as much by corporate politics. (Yes a different set of politics, but not the usual ones.) When used effectively they can work quite well in identifying new things you should do, things you should not do, and even when they agree with management, there is a benefit. Less risk.
we get scarred
Steve is his own consultant. As such, he was able to ride above it all.
Generally i think they are pretty useless in terms of being good at any expertise. They do have value as an arbiter...
Scar tissue from past failure is an asset not a liability
I've got clients that I've been working with, doing long-term consulting and living with every single one of my technical decisions. This just assumes that every consultant is on a 3-month contract and then leaves.
It's weird, today I've spent many years consulting and we see our recommendations through all the way to the implementation and even give hyper care after the fact to ensure our recommendations and solutions are successful. Has this not always been the case in consulting? Or is this not the case for all consulting?
Its probably not appealing to pay the rate of a consulting firm after you've got their consultation
On the level of big corporate this is definitely not the case
It doesnt matter how hard u try to give the best to ur clients... if u never tasted the banana. Need to taste it and many different ones
@@elqord.1118 I work for big corporate, with the absolute largest enterprises in the country, as well as some of the largest federal organizations. But, there are obviously an infinite amount of workstreams that could be consulted on, so maybe we just do it differently in this stream. Either way, it's obvious many do it differently.
@@modrn_ I work for the world's largest automotive company and at least here it is true
Miss him so much.
Completely disagree, as an engineering consultant you have complete responsibility for the deliverables you produce.
Do you live and feel the experience of those deliverables? In Software the idea is to plan it, built it and run it. The focus is on running it. You have to live with the things you have built and bear the consequences of maintenance and new features with the architecture and coding you implemented.
I think it’s the perspective and how badly as an organisation
you want to adapt to new processes and change!
Change is a bus which needs both permanent and consultant to come and unite with the same goal!
It’s a cultural shift. I am a consultant who owns up my mistake and attempt the initiatives. When shit hit the roof I jump in and fix the problem without pointing fingers!
All these things are a topic when you have a team not motivated to do their best!
If you think a permanent person is very good at their job, pay them and take care of them! Reward and recognize truely their contribution
If you think consultant is going beyond his role and wants to make the change. Give him the opportunity and credit!
In the end if things fail we’re all in this together!
I do not understand here why the fact that this consultant is running and trying to grow his/her own business is ignored. He/she is also going through challenges, finding solutions, to create a succesful business and make ground in the specific industry. Consulting also requires a bit of creativity. To design an effective business model, be a great leader for employees. What is more some of them do not content themselves with only one business but launch other businessses. They also get to taste their fruit(s) at the end of the day.
Consultants are in the business of telling others how to run their business. That’s what Jobs is referring to.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Im saving these for later:
Oftentimes companies listen more to consultants than their own employees.
I agree with Jobs’ assessment. However, I found that companies tended to value the ideas of consultants over the ideas of their employees. If push ever came to shove, the consultant’s advice was taken and the employee was ignored or certainly underrated. So, if you have enough experience in an industry, it is far less stressful being a consultant. You also have the advantage of being above the fray when it comes to office politics. And this, in spite of the inherent depth and value of loyal employees’ ownership of systems, often creates problems and issues.
I've done both. Consulting and sitting around maintaining the project long term. Consulting came second. In Engineering you get tired of knowing the decisions you are forced to make are bad. The people you work with aren't very skilled or don't care. The company wants to save money and so they hire inexpensive Engineers lacking experience. You get sick of it. And Consulting allows you to break away from these bad decisions. If companies stuck to Jobs advice to "Hire smart people so they can tell us what to do", I'd work for them. They don't. They cut costs. They cut corners. And the Engineer gets blamed. No thanks.
A good consultant is a good listener first, and after having listened to hundreds or thousands of employees and owners, from a multitude of companies and industries, a good consultant can present ideas and perspective that would otherwise be hidden, due to that wider field of experience. It is easy to get tunnel-vision in any field, and great value can be added from a good consultant. If the payment for consultancy service is connected to results of implementation, or stock-options, the ownership, lyability and invested interest can be more connected. I am speaking both as an entrepreneur and consultant, with a father having the same mix..
I think Job was right when he said it. But it's no longer true now and it's partially his fault. You no longer have any ability to maintain things long term. You might get a year down the line on a project if you're lucky. Then someone way up the food chain decides things aren't going the way they want, and there's a new idea, a new direction, and of course a new buzzword. This self styled Steve Jobs, who is actually more Robert California, has the one idea that will save the company, at least for the next 9-12 months. After that the board or someone higher up the food chain gets a whiff that things aren't going well, this new buzzword hasn't saved the day. After much disruption and much reorganization (or disorganization) an unceremonious email 'Robert California's' last day is today. And in comes a new savior, with a new buzzword, another self styled Steve Jobs ready to be disruptive to the marketplace, but in reality only to be disruptive to employees. And the pattern repeats, over and over again, across industries, across companies, across borders.
The biggest problem woth companies are engineers themselves mostly..I worked for a science company and frankly they listened too much to engineer types who often have absolutely zero practical experience in their field..but they're tasked with designing a system with zero idea of the practical application of it.. products should never be given solely to an engineer.. projects have to include hands on people..I have said since Moses wore short pants that the education and design
Executives hire consultants either to execute some project they dont wanna hire someone for or because they want someone to blame for tough/unpopular decisions
Bananas, peaches, grapes... Apples perhaps?
Whoa ! You may be onto something.
I love steve jobs
Man I miss him. Died too young but left one hell of a legacy.
Anyone got a link to the whole talk?
I have sen this many times. The company has a problem and it brings in consultants and pay them a lot. They come up with a solution. Many of the employees with long experience who actually does the work see problems with this solution, but those opinions are ignored. The result: All the changes and extra work (usually with ridiculous deadlines) falls on the shoulders of the employees. If it's a success both the consultants and the employees get a pat on the back. If it turns out to be a disaster it's the emplyees fault. Almost every problem can be solved if the leaders would ask the employees and care enough to listen to what they have to say. Bring together all the people that the problem affects and share ideas and views. I can not understand why an outsiders opinion is more important than that of a experienced employees. What's also funny is that in many cases the consultants ask the employees and then present the solution as if they came up with it themselves.
Agree 100%, I saw this at my workplace over the years I was there too. Communication is so important, but so many people would rather just absolve themselves of responsibility and have someone else direct their action. My theory was because if leadership listened and acted on the reasoning of their employees and it still failed, that leader would have to be responsible for the failed outcome whereas if you bring in a contracted party and it fails you can say you were listening to experts so you can't be held accountable. It takes a genuine leader to cut through that and actually take responsibility and inspire people to work and build that trust, but those people are few and far between the rest who only want to look after themselves and are happy to throw anyone else under the bus. Given how little loyalty a company has towards it's employees, it's hard not to blame them for being that way (as much as it sucks) as most of them started at the bottom are are used to be treating as the potential scapegoat. I hope I never have to work and navigate that kind of workplace and politics again.
I agree @tompski - as the employees have invested many years of their life in the company, so they have something at stake in contributing their ideas, and they care about their workplace. They also have been thinking about the problems in the company for a long time as well; so they often have enough insight in know how to fix those problems. But often management want to justify their higher wage, and take on all of the direction, and decision making, themselves - as this is the cliche of what a leader is. But a good leader finds a way to incorporate other people's ideas, and make them part of the success of the company.
The employees and leaders were there when the problem started, and may be their cause.
"But a good leader finds a way to incorporate other people's ideas, and make them part of the success of the company." In the corporate model, this is IP theft and corporate sabotage. Outside of the Kafkaesque capitalist world, it's good sense. If business actually shifted to a worker cooperative world, where workers are directly incomed for THEIR ideas, there would be no need for Messiah figures. But people are more loyal to a messianical fantasy more than reality it seems. Shame that our puritanical roots appear once more, looking for someone other than the workers to take the lead.
what about reputation of the consulting company? actually, it is on the stake that would have long-term effect for consulting company
Very inspiring individual, always has something to teach or a new way to look at something
Is there a record of this whole speech?
Some good points here. I used to work for a large UK utility company and we spent a fortune on consultants to provide quick solutions (at high cost) but because they didn’t understand the industry context all that well we’d often end up with “solutions” that we couldn’t actually implement. One of the worst examples is when we paid a company £15 million for a software solution that didn’t even work and we had to scrap it and write the whole investment off
Yes but none of the management accepted the blame for the failure and that is the whole point, layers of protection. It was just the bad consultancy company at fault, the decision to use them was made in good faith etc.
@@XenonJohnD true it wasn't just the consultancy at fault. My team were heavily involved in the project to start with and alarm bells started ringing almost straight away. We tried to raise our concerns to management but were ignored. In fact we got told we weren't invited to meetings anymore due to our "negative" attitude, but in the end we were proven right about how bad the software actually was. None of our management took the blame or suffered any consequences because of it though
Where can we find the full lecture ?
You should only take advice from people who have tasted the fruits. I never understood the value of fresh grad consultants.
people don't choose to be consultants. companies do it so they don't have to pay benefits this video is very old at the time consulting meant something different
What lecture is this from?
He's talking about academic consultants. I worked in the field from the very bottom to the top then became consultant. And yes he has a great point, because many consultants are just applying academic knowledge without context.