Banking Tech vs Consulting
 

Hi Everyone,

Seeking some help here as I'm evaluating come current offers and am in a bit of a dilemma.

Fresh grad here. I currently have an offer for a tech (SWE) position at a local bank, as well as a tier 2/3 strategy consulting firm. I know both happen to be very different roles, but I'm personally someone who is quite flexible in terms of the type of work I can do so I don't have a strong inclination on either.

I think the key question is this - which one will have more career capital in the long term? I know BO is not glamorous, but the technical experience could be a good springboard especially is a world that is digitalising. On the flipside, I'm concerned that tech in general is getting saturated and I'll just be another ordinary SWE. At the same time, if I enter consulting, I would not develop a specialised skillset, and while it is a somewhat glamorous industry now, I'm not sure about its future.

Anyone has inputs on this? Many thanks!

What will you be doing in the consulting firm exactly? Implementation or actual strategy work?

A mix of both actually.

Never heard of tier 3 consulting firms. If the offer is not from OW/Kearney/RB (tier 2 strats), you’re probably better off going into local bank BO. No idea what’s with ‘glamour’ nowadays, BO in a bank will still enable you to live very decently.

Perhaps you can share the name of the consulting firm (or similar peers)?

If you are technical kinda person don’t go consulting route. Tech consulting is not glamorous and you don’t learn much in terms of technical skills. Just mainly stakeholder management and working on not so up to date technologies with IT illiterate clients

Accenture not glamorous?

Accenture is not glamorous at all for ppl who are into tech. More for ppl who like to engage client, wayang and able to speak well but not necessarily have the technical aptitude to do the work.

Just to be a bit more specific, I'm referring to strategy consulting. I have decent technical skills but not the best at it.

This.

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I see. Don't want to mention the name of the firm directly, but similar peers would be RB, ADL, LEK, and Simon-Kucher.

OW? Dont need act so high and mighty, people trying to help you here. More info the more they can help you make an informed decision.

Most likely TS gotten an offer from DBS and Accenture.

And accenture one probably not in real 'strategy'. You are better off choosing DBS.

When am I acting high and mighty? I don't want to give names because I don't want to be identified. Just abit kiasu here but I appreciate the help.

For argument's sake let's just say DBS and ADL.

Tier 3 refers to the consulting arms of the Big 4, no? Maybe the recent acquisitions of Monitor, Parthenon, Strategy& helped boost their prestige but historically Big 4 consulting were considered sucky sweatshops

Lol see people still fixated on figuring which firm. All the best to you. Most likely you wont get any helpful advice here.

Do they pay the same? Consulting seems riskier and with a worse WLB.

Nope, the consulting one is about 25% higher. So yes I see that as compensating the risk and poorer WLB.

Haha thanks! Well, trying my luck here

I’m very curious, what value add does a consulting firm provide ? Do the proposal provided give u additional 30% (example) more revenue ?
How they should go to market , etc ? Isn’t these what marketing & sales people should do ?

Yep it may or may not. But consulting firms exists because of this simple problem: people at the top dont know how to best steer the company forward. This could be due to several reasons eg. Lets say you took over as the CEO, and you discovered that 1 of the method for you to save this sinking ship is to cut operations in countries where it costs more to sustain the operations than what it is actually bringing in terms of profits.

So whats the next step? Well you can straight away tell the whole company that you are removing operations in those countries. Or you can engage the help of a consultancy first, bring them in to do the research, interview people, do zero-based budgeting, so on and so forth. Then ultimately if they do come to the same recommendation as you, it would be easier for you to implement the decision to shut down operations in those countries. So the consultancy acts as a safeguard for you to implement the tough decision of cutting manpower around the world and destroying their livelihoods.

Would you, as the CEO, do this without engaging the help of consultants?

Lets add another POV on why consultants are needed.

Lets say you are a lowly worker, you have been complaining for ages to your boss that this tech system is very unfriendly in terms of UX, and needs an overhaul. This is affecting your productivity for the longest time and you are very close to quitting.

After 2 years of complaints, your boss decided that it is time for an overhaul and decides that a new implementation has to take place. So your boss contacted Group IT, then has the matter raised all the way to the Group CTO. So the Group CTO asks the Group IT whether they are capable of consolidating all business requirements from business teams around the world (your company has global presence), translate them into technical implementation steps and then implement them with minimal and zero disruptions to BAU activities.

What do you think the Group IT's response would be?

Basically consultants rubber stamp and help organisations justify their s hitty decisions because the C-Suite (1) are too spineless to make the call, (2) can hide behind external advice, and (3) can blame somebody if it all goes to s hit.

You know what they say about consultants right - they'll borrow your watch to tell the time and then charge you for it.

They're the ultimate shills. Just go read up about McKinsey and all the dubious third world governments with poor human rights records they're involved in helping. Oh, go read up McKinsey's role in the US opioid crisis too.

So if there isnt a demand for consultants, would they still exist? As much as we hate consultants because of a million reasons, they exist because our corporate world is imperfect. When you are sick you go to a doctor. But when a company is sick, they would go to consultants. Plain and simple. You can continue having the belief that all they do is powerpoint slides but bear in mind if you really satki enough to not need them, then they would cease to exist. Are you satki enough?

Wtf is wrong with you? The guy literally listed 3 reasons as to why there’s demand for consultants.

Consulting = long hours, higher salary ceiling, potentially challenging work and decent exit opportunities

Banking tech = regular hours, lower salary ceiling, menial work and terrible exit opportunities

If go banking you either get out early or you stay for life. If you want to exit at lets say AVP level, your salary is too high for the work you do, so you might have trouble jumping ship without significant paycut.

Got to be one of the greatest misconceptions around. Consulting isn’t as exciting as you think of it to be - trust me, most consulting projects these days are more or less the same (tech implementation like moving operations to cloud systems etc). As for banking tech/BO, it can get really interesting. Just look at the tech that is emerging/has emerged in banking - blockchain, emphasis on UI/UX, AI and more. DBS and JPM are great examples of how innovative banks have become (surprise surprise, McKinsey has published a report detailing how digital transformation is most mature in the financial + TMT sectors). You will obtain relevant tech/pm experience that will enable you to hop to not just other FIs, but Fintechs as well.

Whatever it is, just follow your heart OP. Best of luck!

Yes I kinda agree with the rubber stamp portion but they do have their disclaimer as well.
It’s kind of ironic right, some company like to hire people with consultancy background. but at the end of the day, they still hire external consultant to provide the “backing” on whatever proposition that the “employee” or “C-suite” wants to implement or change.

Simply because once the consultant is hired into the company as an employee, that ex-consultant loses his/her association and backing of that consultancy. Whatever he/she recommends would be deemed as coming from himself only, and not part of whatever consultancy he/she comes from.

Eg. Your company hires a mckinsey guy, after onboarding to your team he diagnoses your business process problems and recommends a solution. Would your team listen to him more because he is an ex-mckinsey? Or would your team just deem it as nonsense, how can a new guy know better about our processes than us who were around for more than 10 years???

Which proves one of the above poster's point that consultants are only used for external validation.

Speaking from experience, I trained and worked briefly as a lawyer before moving to a semi-consulting & analysis type role. The commonalities are always the same in both fields. In-house expertise is valued but at the end of the day, management will always engage an external "expert" to validate internal findings and cover their ass. In the end, we usually end up checking the external expert's work, which is sometimes far off the mark and so riddled with disclaimers and assumptions that its practically useless. Good grief man!

consulting - you answer to both your organization and the client. however, you take no credit when the client succeeds but all the sh*t if something goes wrong.

banking - you just answer to your own organization. in fact, you might even get the opportunity to own a project and boss consultants around. take almost all the credit in the event of success and just little responsibility if things fail. consultants can be used as ur bullet-proof vest, similar concept to what was brought up by another poster previously.

take note that most consultants are dying to exit into the industry (ergo be the client themselves)

If its off the mark, couldnt you share your findings as well to steer it close to the mark? After all those external consultants and whatnots would usually work closely with you, bothering your everyday with interviews about your process and your thoughts right? Or do they lock themselves in 1 of your meeting rooms and dont talk to you guys to collect information at all? If its the latter, then your company has hired consultants who dont know what they are doing.

Take no credit? You sure about that? Consultancies have come a long way since the good old "claim no credits" days. For example, consultancies are now proud to announce that they are partners-working alongside big clients in order to attain some of that halo effect. It makes for good credentials as well, imagine you are running a travel company-1 of the biggest names now, and your competitor just hired mckinsey for consulting and revamp of their program management system. Would you be worried? Would you want to hire mckinsey or another 1 of mckinsey's competitor?

Take another example, if you are running a company not in the travel industry but closely related, and you have witnessed great success from that mckinsey engagement. Would you not try to hire mckinsey as well?

In Singapore at least, consultancies are always proud to announce that they are partnering with governmental organisations in delivering positive impact to citizens.

Yes, we do that all the time. Between all the incessant fact finding, explanations, breaking down of internal processes and meetings with them, we really might as well do the work ourselves. We'll probably get it done faster than the consulting team if that was the only thing we had on our plate.

Strictly speaking, we can do have the brainpower to do the work ourselves, just that it is sometimes more cost effective and time-saving to outsource one off projects externally. In my experience with various engagements, there's really not much knowledge transfer though because the consulting methodologies are by no means groundbreaking. I recognise that this is industry specific though so probably some sectors benefit more from consultants than others.

again, consultancies are awarded no credit. ergo, they have to toot their own horns like what you said. even so, they have to clear with their clients first (e.g. not delving into too much specifics).

let me give u an example. sg govt has many consultancies on their payroll (for digital transformation - singpass project and ns portal; as well as advice on covid mgmt etc). ever heard them mentioning any? nope. mostly it’s just this committee or that ministry, no one gives them credit for a job well done. on the flip side, if sh*t hits the fan, you will see all the arrows flying out on print media.

Very insightful. Really dont get what’s with all the ‘glamour’ in consulting. Personally, as long as I love my job and it enables me to live comfortably without sacrificing too much WLB, I’m happy.

Heard of too many stories of how these high-flying jobs in finance/strat consulting led to a deterioration of mental/physical health as well as personal relationships. Not my cup of tea, but too each it’s own.

Yes, but does the methodology or consultancy given by mckinsey really make the company do well by making tons of $$$ ? (taking away on the part of external "validation" )

if so, shouldn't all the small start-up company engage mckinsey and will become successful overnight because of strategy provided by them.

If so, ex-mckinsey team could just come out open their own start-up and potentially become the next google, amazon, etc

Firstly, not every start up has the budget to engage MBB. Secondly, MBB will not waste time on small engagements when they have bigger fish to fry. Thirdly, most startups are run by founders who actually more or less understand the business they're building.

The consultants only come in when companies start to get large and bloated and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Notice a pattern? Yes, essentially its the blind leading the blind.


A major reason why strategy consulting is being criticised is because it is rather difficult to quantify the value that they bring. Hence giving rise to suspicion that they're peddling no more than a few slide decks thrown together at exorbitant prices.

As for your last point, many MBB alumni are indeed parachuted into high growth companies, with mixed success. After all, its very easy to be a third party commentator but not so easy to run the ship. A rough analogy can be seen in politics - it's very easy to be an opposition party, but when you're actually in government, guess what, you actually have to deliver results.

Having worked at both Accenture and JPM, I strongly suggest your go for banking tech unless the bank who offered you is working with legacy tech

Yep you just gave more examples to the reasons why consultancies exists.

You mentioned "We'll probably get it done faster than the consulting team if that was the only thing we had on our plate.". Consultancies exists because employees have their own roles and responsibilities to fulfill on a daily basis and have little to no time or manpower to work on projects which are related to streamlining efficiency. If you can get rid of this problem then good for you, if not then you jolly well have to accept them around.

You mentioned "it is sometimes more cost effective and time-saving to outsource...". This is another reason why consultancies exist. They know that businesses cannot afford to hire a group of internal change managers on a fulltime basis just to tackle 1 particular inefficiency in the business. So unless you can get rid of this problem entirely, consultancies are here to stay.

Yep what consultancies do may not be groundbreaking but they are still needed in today's corporate world. The part they play is still substantial and sustainable to businesses everywhere.