Guest post: McKinsey & Company’s ethical problems are baked-in to the organization
A thoughtful and considerate analysis by my friend and former colleague, Zachary Ernst, regarding McKinsey’s recent spate of mistakes made public.
McKinsey & Company’s ethical problems are baked-in to the organization
By Zac Ernst
I spent about a year working at McKinsey & Company as a Principal Data Engineer. In that role, I was responsible for training and technical implementation for clients who were building a data science capability. Given that I was there for only a year, you can infer that this job was not a good fit for me.
One of the reasons I quit — but not the only reason — was that I felt I could not work for a company that was so unapologetic about its role in fueling the opioid crisis in the United States. This was personal for me. I happen to have chronic pain, and I’ve met plenty of other chronic pain sufferers who have become addicted to opiates. Fortunately, I avoided that particular problem, but this was mostly good luck. If things had gone slightly differently for me, I could easily have become an addict myself.
As more information kept coming out (primarily through the New York Times) about McKinsey’s actions, this bothered me more and more…
