I burned out at McKinsey and quit the
elitist consulting lifestyle.
The workload was mentally straining
and I felt myself losing my humility.
Angelina Lu took a pay cut to quit management consulting and join a tech startup.
- Angelina Lu is a former business analyst at McKinsey & Company who quit to join a tech startup.
- She said she left her $130,000 consultant job because of burnout and workdays of 12 to 15 hours.
- Lu also said was too proud to discuss her declining mental health with her coworkers.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Angelina Lu, a former business analyst who worked at McKinsey & Company. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I studied material science and engineering as an undergrad at Northwestern University. But after spending two summers working in a research lab, I realized that research life was not what I wanted — I didn't feel excited by the routine of going to the lab to conduct research.
I became more interested in the business side of material science than the technical side, and I considered another career path — consulting, a popular track for Northwestern graduates
I was hired by McKinsey & Company as a business analyst
My base salary was $80,000 plus an additional performance bonus when I joined in 2016. McKinsey provided a retirement-program contribution of 7% of qualified compensation, and I also received a sign-on bonus of $5,000. This brought the total compensation I received in my first year to $106,650.
The bonus was based on my performance after the first year and was calculated as a percentage of my base salary. If I performed exceptionally well, I got a bonus addition to my base. Then in the following year, this bonus was combined with my base salary to become my new base for compensation.
When I left McKinsey as a senior business analyst, my salary was about $130,000. As far as I know, McKinsey doesn't negotiate salaries, and they don't play the numbers game. It doesn't matter whether you're hired as a business analyst or an associate or whether you have competing offers from other companies — there's no negotiating your salary.
For me, the $130,000 salary wasn't worth it, so I walked away and took a pay cut to join a tech startup. I also wanted to explore something else in my career.
The McKinsey workload was mentally agonizing
We averaged workdays of 12 to 15 hours. On Mondays, I'd typically wake up at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. before getting to the airport to catch the earliest flight to meet my client. I'd use the flight to catch up on work, get ready for the day, or nap to get more rest.
I still recall how depressed I felt during one flight to a client's city. Just as the flight touched down, my phone started going off with email notifications. The sound of the notifications was stressing me so badly that I moved the Gmail app to the last screen of my phone just so I could stop looking at it and try to calm down.
Some weeks were known for having crazy workloads, like the two-week due diligence period. This is when a consulting firm thoroughly investigates a client's business, operations, and other relevant aspects. During this time, some of us had work until the early morning hours and slept only a few hours before returning to work at 8 a.m.
I was also stressed out by a not-so-friendly colleague. He was an associate on my team who had been at the firm longer than me. Whenever there was an issue with the project we were working on, he said it was because I didn't do my job properly, which made me look really bad in front of leadership. The situation was super stressful — I remember it was wintertime in Chicago, and I started to have severe face allergies and stress-induced eczema on my hands that I couldn't stop scratching.
I started losing my humility and patience
McKinsey recruits extremely smart people who often come from similar backgrounds — most are extremely academic or very accomplished in their fields. Consultants like me get used to our well-manicured lifestyle. I stayed in upscale $400 a night hotels, and the company gave me food credits of $120 a day. I also never had to worry about extraneous administrative tasks — McKinsey took care of that.
McKinsey has a dedicated travel team that books flights for consultants. If we needed to change a flight, instead of waiting in line to contact airline agents, we would just call our internal travel desk, and they'd sort everything out for us. It saved us a lot of time.
But I realized I was getting too used to this lifestyle when I started losing humility and patience. I remember waiting in an extremely slow-moving line. I became extremely impatient and thought, "How can these people be so inefficient?" Reflecting on this now, I recognize that I was under a lot of stress and was used to this consultant lifestyle where the firm tended to my every need. Real life, as I came to understand, operates quite differently.
I was too proud to share about my declining mental health
Saying "I'm having a mental breakdown" aloud makes you sound defeated, so I never admitted it. A lot of consultants I know are proud, myself included.
This often meant that I couldn't admit when I didn't know how to do something or that I was on the brink of a mental breakdown — it would make me look defeated and unsuccessful, and it meant that I didn't have enough grit to make it through.
I didn't want to burden others with my emotions because everyone had full plates, so I never publicly discussed the mental strains with my team, mentors, or managers.
There were positives to working at McKinsey
It wasn't all bad. The mere fact that I got into a place at McKinsey and spoke up in a room of senior consultants gave me a confidence boost. McKinsey also gave me a platform that made it much easier for me to open doors: I've been able to get conversations with companies I'm interested in because I have "McKinsey" on my résumé.
McKinsey also provides a program called "Secondment." This is a temporary assignment where a McKinsey consultant or employee is placed within another organization to work on a specific project or initiative, like an internship. So if you wanted to take a break while working at McKinsey, you could join other companies affiliated with the program to try new roles without really leaving.
I chose to work in a small consultancy in Kenya for six months. It was an incredible experience where I got to explore the country and build a strong network there.
I even met my husband through McKinsey — we just got married this March.
I'm now a product manager in tech and love seeing the impact I make
After McKinsey, I became a product manager at the fintech company WealthSimple. Unlike my time in management consulting, I've met many people from diverse backgrounds — like college dropouts who have successfully built startups, for example.
Another thing I like about my job as a product manager is executing projects. In consulting, I did high-level strategy and walked through one or two use cases only to hand it off to the clients to implement and finish. But in tech, I can collect feedback to make an impact immediately.
I think it's important to discuss the realities of consulting. Many people hear about only the positives, but I believe it's crucial to mentally prepare people for the challenges they might face in the industry. This way, they might be able to make informed decisions about pursuing a consulting career for reasons beyond glamour and prestige.
McKinsey & Company did not respond to a request for comment.
If you've left management consulting and want to share your story, email Aria Yang at ayang@insider.com.
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