Let’s be honest – the lifestyle in consulting is not the best one. As you are closely working with decision makers at the leading companies in the world, you will work long hours - similar to your client counterparts. We touched upon this in our article on how glamorous consulting life actually is.

So, a major reason why consultants exit consulting is that the lifestyle is becoming unsustainable – either because the professional aspiration or private circumstances change. After grinding for years, a lot of people just want to have a job with less hours – and by short we don’t necessarily mean 9 to 5. But even just reducing hours from 50-60 hours per week, down from 80, is a lifestyle upgrade. This is only natural and many transition to the corporate world when they reach the point of being fed up with the long hours.

As most consultants start at their firm right after graduating college in their 20s, they don’t really need to align their professional ambition with their private life. Maybe their friends or significant other are also focusing on their career. But once they come into their 30s, many people want to make more time for family, potentially think about having kids, building a home, etc. Of course, consulting firms are trying to improve the lifestyle and offer services to accommodate consultants with families. McKinsey, for example, offers preferred local staffing for parents as well as part-time models to keep consulting attractive for families. But despite all these efforts, it’s still difficult to work in consulting while also finding enough time for your family. So this is another major reason why many consultants decide to quit.

This point goes into a similar direction as the previous one on lifestyle but we thought it’s still worth highlighting. As a consultant, you usually travel a lot. You’ll spend up to 200 nights per year in hotels, depending on where your projects are. When you are young this is all fun, as you get to see many different cities – even though you spend much of your waking hours at the client site or at the hotel in front of your laptop. A nice perk, of course, is that you get to collect bonus miles with your favorite airline as well as hotel points with your favorite hotel chain. For more on the benefits of being a consultant check out our article on the topic.

Once consultants mature, the proposition of travelling a lot, flying business class, and experiencing fancy hotels becomes less and less attractive. Travelling starts to become more like a necessary chore that comes along with working in consulting – almost like riding the bus to work. This is a major downer especially once you have a family. If you’re away all week, you won’t get the chance to bring your kids to kindergarten or pick them up from school.

Most consultant are at the level of project manager once they start a family. And if they don’t have a local client base by then they usually have to keep travelling to their clients in other cities. This, of course, becomes a major reason to look for a corporate job with only occasional travel. Even if the consultant continues to enjoy the grind and the travel, it’s often the significant other insisting on more attention, which makes the consultant (him or her) give in.

Consulting projects are very fast paced. There are some exceptions, for example long running  transformations, but generally clients won’t hire expensive consultants to just work on a chill project for a couple of weeks. The projects, especially the ones McKinsey, BCG and Bain work on, are usually time sensitive and of high priority for the client. Thus, you’ll have to make major progress to stay on track and within the deadlines stated in the project’s work plan.

Imagine a 6-week strategy sprint for a client, defining the global 2030 organic & inorganic growth strategy. In such a project, every day counts as the CEO wants to present his growth plan to the executive board on an executive offsite that’s already scheduled for a certain date. Wasting time for even just a day will cause you to fall behind schedule and your lifestyle will become a nightmare as you’re always chasing the project deliverables from meeting to meeting.

On the one hand, this high pressure environment is what makes consulting such an interesting job with a steep learning curve. But on the other hand it’s also a major reason why people leave consulting. After spending years in this high-pace environment, many consultants want to reduce their stress levels. This is not only because they can’t or don’t want to handle the pressure anymore but also because the high pressure environment comes with long working hours and being available (more or less) 24/7. 

Being a consultant is great. You get to advise many of the leading companies in an industry, working with them on strategic initiatives or improving their operations. But at a certain point in their career, many consultants want to not only advise clients but also have full P&L ownership – meaning that the want to be responsible for the impact of the initiatives on their profit and loss statement. Maybe they want to be responsible for a certain profit center or for managing people in a department. That’s why they move on to the corporate world, or they set up their own start-up.

This is similar to investment banking. As an M&A banker, you are advising clients on M&A deals, helping them screen targets, model the implications of the deal, as well as structure the deal. But you are not ultimately responsible for making the decision to buy or sell a company. That’s why many investment bankers want to switch from the sell-side (i.e., their current role as advisors) to the buy-side, so a role where are the decision makers. As a result, many investment bankers switch to M&A teams in a corporate, or to private equity firms.

As mentioned before, advising someone is not the same as actually acting on the advice with full responsibility for the implications. And that’s one of the reasons why many (especially more senior) consultants quit.

This one is similar to the previous point. Most consultants are driven individuals, otherwise they wouldn’t even have passed the interview. Such individuals always think about how to create, or exploit opportunities. So it’s only natural that many consultants launch start-ups. We also touched upon this point in our article on exit opportunities for consultants.

We’ve seen many of our former colleagues start a business, for which the MBB pedigree comes in very handy. When you’re raising money for your start-up, VC investors know immediately that you’re driven and hard-working once you spent multiple years at McKinsey, BCG, or Bain. They also know that you must be convinced of your idea, given the high opportunity cost you incur when leaving consulting. That’s why they are automatically more willing to listen to you and put trust in you. A venture capital investor is much more willing to bet his career on someone with the MBB stamp on their CV than an unknown commodity. Even if the investment goes south, the investor has an argument that the decision was not reckless. Additionally, your network from consulting can come in handy when starting a company. You’ll know many driven individuals who might want to jump on the bandwagon and join your start-up. Further, if you are setting up a start-up in the same industry you worked in as a consultant, you might already know potential business partners or investors.

Imagine you set up a FinTech start-up focusing on bringing a digital solution to retail banking. If you’ve worked in the banking industry as a consultant for a couple of years you’ll likely know some of the executives of the largest retail banks in your region. Additionally, you have the network within your consulting firm of people focusing on retail banking. Finally, if you’ve done some private equity work, you might also know some venture capital executives. And the combination of the three will really help you in forming potential partnerships with retail banks, getting knowledgeable and driven people on board, and getting funding for your start-up. 

Consulting is notorious for its up-or-out culture. In short, this means that you have to get the next promotion within a certain period of time or you get asked to leave. This usually does not come as a surprise as your get regular feedback and are being evaluated continuously. You will always know on which areas you have to work on to avoid getting the boot.

Most consultants make it to project manager if they really focus on working on their development areas and have a strong consulting toolkit. But once making project manager the dynamics shift a bit. As a business analyst or associate, all you have to do is doing a good job as a consultant – no matter the industry or client. Once you become project manager, you have to build your core client base and you also have to build an internal value proposition in the consulting firm. For example, you can be the project manager who focuses on optimizing operations for players in the packaging industry.

Once you’re at the level of project manager, you usually have to commit yourself to becoming partner, refining your value proposition, and finding your 2-3 core clients with constant project flow. This often comes with a lot of grind, working on client development while being 100% staffed on projects as a project manager and also working on additional topics to show the value you bring to a broader audience internally and externally. This could be a new internal initiative you co-develop, or an industry analysis that you help publish externally. As you can see, this is a huge commitment and making partner from project manager takes at least 4 years for most (with a junior partner level somewhere in the middle of that).

Therefore, many consultants actively decide to not purse making partner and work as a project manager for another year or so before they leave consulting. However, this can also be a non-voluntary decision if, for example, you’re close to making partner but 2 of your 3 core clients don’t do any new projects for some time because of an economic downturn or other internal reasons. Whatever the reason, project manager is a very common level to leave consulting if you don’t plan on making partner.

We all know that consulting is an attractive career option. Ultimately, however, only about 2% stick around and eventually make it to partner – most leave somewhere along the way. There are many reasons for this, which we’ve described above. They often revolve around lifestyle, stress, and the willingness to take ownership. That’s why most consultants quit voluntarily after a couple of years. But what about leaving involuntarily? That’s what we discuss in this blog post.