I often get a lot of people coming to me asking, “What is it like to be a PM @ the Big 4?”
Good question! The first thing that comes to everyone’s mind when they think consulting is dragging out meetings & using big words. They aren’t wrong, but there’s a little more to it than that.
I’ll do my best to describe below what it is like…
There’s an idea of a Product-Led Organization: A framework for involving the product team in critical decisions for encouraging growth & development of product(s). This is the mentality (or attempted mentality) of a lot of SaaS-based startups.
No surprise, as a product manager I want to see this type of mentality at every organization I go to (I will often vet them for it).
However, Consulting firms will champion this idea of Product-Led growth while encouraging policies that are the exact opposite.
Nature of Consulting (Yes, I’m gonna bash it here)
When leadership doesn’t understand building products, it trickles down to every rung of the ladder and becomes obvious that it’s the blind leading the blind.
Consulting is truly about recycling & gravitating towards the safest options. Senior Managers — who are on their proving ground for Partner, Principle or Managing Director — want to reduce potential risks as much as possible, stymying innovation.
If you can pad an engagement for more margin, while utilizing less resources, you are winning the game.
SaaS-based enterprises have the exact opposite incentive.
They cannot rely on clients' annual audits or a re-org of their oracle ERP instance every year, they need innovation to survive.
Product Managers & product executives, who act as their lighthouse, guide the company to find a niche within the industry where they can subsist. They ask the tough questions:
- What Feature does company X have? How does that compare to what we offering?
- If we pivot, are we moving to a market that is too saturated?
- What is the adoption of this feature? Is this a success? Where is our next move in the industry?
My point is product managers exist in consulting firms, but often get left out of the conversation with Sales-led growth strategies & leaders with disagreements regarding direction.
You’ve seen this before?
When the massive tech layoffs bloodbath occurred in 2022, Consulting firms (And big gov) hoped to pick up some of that talent at a discount. Let me also mention some of the reasons why it won’t/ didn’t work…
When it comes to building products at consulting firms, they inevitably have a cycle…
The #1 reason for product failure across consulting firms is:
Talent turnover. Talent does not stick around — and for a multitude of good reasons.
- Independence. This sounds like a force for good, but it isn’t. All Big 4 (& even small consulting firms) must follow a strict set of rules for investing while working in the professional services industry. This goes for every practitioner & I’ve witnessed firsthand it destroy some of the best talent. Even when practitioners are on internal investments, building new tools within the company, they have these restrictions. You know who doesn’t have these independence restrictions? Any other non-audit based tech company.
- Partner mentality. I’ve witnessed partners jump on a call with leadership and have expectations of revenue return within 3 months for SaaS-centered products; That’s obviously not realistic. Depending on the sector of the firm, a partner is accustomed to schmoozing the client, having practitioners deploy early within their client’s instance & advising on how to get the most of out your pre-packaged SaaS Solution. To go out and then build a new solution? 18 months? It sounds like a joke to them. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” & most partners in the firm don’t intend to.
- Difference in reward structure. Large consulting organizations often value time in role more than traditional tech companies. While excellence is rewarded, strict age bands keep dis-incentivize practitioners from the heroism seen at SaaS companies.
What is the result?:
The less product-focused a company is, everyone in the chain suffers —
Product Managers have no venom and turn into glorified Project Managers.
Software Engineers become apathetic because they lose relations with someone who understands tech & software.
Management has to deal with increased overhead because it is no longer evenly distributed & this pane of apathy trickles down to QA, Automation & more.
So…How do we fix it?
I’m sure some consulting firms have noted the talent death cycle I’ve written about above (likely in quiet circles).
There are some (relatively) easy ways to institute change:
- Take the training wheels off — Consulting engagements are often too safe because any failure is a reflection of the Senior Manager/ Managers who are gunning for partners. As a result, firms often give controls (in the cloud, dev environment or more) to management. Management (often not tech-based) that doesn’t know what they are doing. We cannot encourage innovation or for Consulting firms to build respectable products if they constantly feel like they are walking on thin ice.
- Remove independence requirements from certain practitioners Practitioners that are product-focused at consulting firms shouldn’t have a restriction on trading, and investing. Realistically, you can’t: slap more restrictions on candidates, not pay them equity AND tell them who they can & can’t invest with. Otherwise, what ARE you offering them that they can’t get elsewhere?
- Hire more BootCamp grads — Consulting firms need to break this Ivy League first mentality within the product space. Consulting? Sure, that makes sense. A better degree = better impression. However, in the product space BootCamp grads offer a good talent bridge. Worker bees for a discount who struggle to get into big tech because of lacking experience. The firm pads their margins, new BootCamp grads gain experience, it’s a win-win.
So to answer the question: “What is it like being a Big 4 product manager?”
I’ll say: “It’s got a long way to go…”
