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McKinsey initially focused on India, where it aggressively promoted that country’s educated, English-speaking population as a landing spot for U.S. corporations seeking cheap labor. With McKinsey’s help, India became the world’s top offshoring location, earning the nickname “Offshore-istan.” According to Anita Raghavan, who has written about the rising influence of the Indian elite, McKinsey’s success in India was due largely to two senior leaders in the firm, Rajat Gupta, the firm’s managing partner from 1994 to 2003, and Anil Kumar, who had developed the firm’s internet practice in Silicon Valley. Kumar, pompous and abrasive, was not popular in the firm, but he had a powerful ally in Gupta, who shared his desire to spur economic development in India.

McKinsey worked closely with two of India’s biggest outsourcing companies: the trade group NASSCOM; and Infosys, which specializes in information technology and business consulting. McKinsey continued to advise Infosys as recently as 2020. Offshoring hurt American workers, but it was very good for India’s economy. “Our employee stock options program created some of India’s first salaried millionaires,” Infosys boasted on its website.

—p.39 Winners and Losers: The Inequality Machine (32) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

“Companies move their business services offshore because they can make more money—which means that wealth is created for the United States as well as for the country receiving the jobs,” McKinsey said. The benefit, the firm said, was a “bigger cake” for everyone to share. McKinsey pointed to how the airlines save money through offshoring: “By leveraging cheap labor, airlines are now able to chase delinquent accounts receivables that they would earlier be forced to ignore.”

D:

—p.40 Winners and Losers: The Inequality Machine (32) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

McKinsey acknowledged that some American workers may suffer in the short term, but said that shouldn’t overshadow the benefits. “Focusing the offshoring debate on job losses misses the most important point: offshoring creates value for the US economy by creating value for US companies,” McKinsey wrote. It also produces new revenue and repatriates earnings that indirectly help create jobs for displaced workers. Some displaced workers can move to “other, high value-added activities,” McKinsey said.

lol

—p.41 Winners and Losers: The Inequality Machine (32) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

Whereas other companies might celebrate employees for their loyalty and experience, apparently Walmart was not one of them. “Given the impact of tenure on wages and benefits, the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity,” the task force found. “Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits, as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart.” More than anything, this showed how attitudes toward labor had changed since the Treaty of Detroit once held out the promise of a more secure future for workers, one in which their children might have a better life than their parents.

data-driven decisions lol

pano inspo

—p.44 Winners and Losers: The Inequality Machine (32) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

Legislators wanted to know what McKinsey did to earn monthly fees of roughly $1 million. Or in the lingo of consultants, what were the “deliverables”? Harris, looking over documents at a hearing, saw something that troubled him. “Every month they repeat the same deliverables. So why is this the same without variation?” Harris asked. “I think that’s a logical question.”

“It is,” Norwood replied.

Harris said some deliverables appeared vague, such as helping support and prepare leadership “for provider engagement sessions at appropriate cadence to be defined.” At this point, some people began to laugh, he said.

“Do we have a cadence defined?” Harris asked with a touch of sarcasm.

lmao

reminds me of model un resolutions ending with 'decides to remain actively seized of the matter'

—p.56 Playing Both Sides: Helping Government Help McKinsey (51) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

To increase its visibility, McKinsey set up the Center for U.S. Health System Reform “to track and model the impact of regulatory change on market and consumer dynamics.” The center is unambiguous about its target audience. “We support investors—including strategic buyers and private equity—to understand opportunities emerging from the latest legislative and regulatory reform trends [and] identify attractive investment areas and assets across the healthcare value chain.”

nooooo

—p.64 Playing Both Sides: Helping Government Help McKinsey (51) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

Reading the article, Elfenbein knew that McKinsey was in conflict with what was until then the defining arc of his life. His fiancée—Elfenbein was days away from his wedding—was blunt. “If you don’t quit right now, you don’t stand for anything,” she said.

—p.85 McKinsey at ICE: "We Do Execution, Not Policy" (74) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

He laid out his recommendations in bullet points. Among them: a demand that McKinsey make a public apology for working for ICE and “stop saying we would do this work again.” Another: “Stop using legality as the barometer for ethicality.” On this, he was particularly biting, adding a parenthetical phrase: “If we helped southern states ‘improve agricultural asset yield’ in the 1850s would we still stand behind that? Our guidance so far would indicate the answer is ‘maybe.’ ”

damn

—p.89 McKinsey at ICE: "We Do Execution, Not Policy" (74) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

A few days later, D’Emidio, the partner in charge of the ICE project, sent a mass email of his own. Subject: “Call for reconciliation and healing.”

In bullet points, he wrote of his deep sympathy “for those of you whose families and friends live in fear of my client,” as well as guilt “for having been the cause of so much angst, shame, mistrust, and anger for so many of you.”

But then his email took a turn as he described how hurt he was “by the stinging words of some emails accusing me of having no sense of ethics, purpose, or values,” anger at the “vilification” of his colleagues on the ICE project, plus “frustration” over what he said were “inaccurate portrayals” of the team’s work. He then said he was proud of the “impact” his team had. D’Emidio called for dialogue “with the hope that we can heal each other’s wounds.”

lmao

—p.90 McKinsey at ICE: "We Do Execution, Not Policy" (74) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago

It was an electrifying time to be in China. The economy was opening up to Western businesses, and Chinese students flew off by the hundreds of thousands to get a first-class education in the United States. China’s burgeoning and largely uncontrolled internet was bursting with entrepreneurial talent. Despite the political pall that descended over the country after the 1989 crackdown, on a personal level Chinese people enjoyed freedoms unimaginable just a few years earlier. They were no longer tied to an assigned work unit and could instead work and shop where they wanted and marry whom they chose. Soon the country would join the World Trade Organization, and many hoped the economic liberalization would lead to demands for more political rights.

was this written by chatgpt lol

—p.95 Befriending China’s Government (91) by Michael Forsythe, Walt Bogdanich 2 years, 1 month ago