The Nation – Inside the soul-crushing, morally bankrupt, top-secret world of our most powerful consulting firm. “…What does McKinsey do? Generally, it deploys teams of sleep-deprived, overeducated young people to solve tough problems for organizations—typically for-profit businesses, though the firm also serves many governments and large nonprofit organizations. If you’re a CEO who wants help evaluating whether to enter a new market or lay off thousands of employees, you might hire McKinsey. McKinsey made the prescient decision to avoid credit for its work, keeping its client and project lists secret. In practice, this has insulated the company from the disasters it was party to, such as the collapse of Enron. (This secrecy also serves to deter nearly all current and former McKinsey employees from speaking to reporters, meaning that, despite my best efforts, some of the details in this piece are based solely upon my own recollections.) McKinsey’s recruiting materials offer you the chance to “Change the world. Improve lives.” Naïve as it seems in hindsight, I came to McKinsey believing those words. But after a year and a half there, I eventually understood that not only does McKinsey fail to make the world better—it often colludes with those who make the world worse…”