The Pros of Working at McKinsey
The Pros of Working at McKinsey
- McKinsey changed my life. It taught me how to think, put me in rooms I had no business being in, and gave me friendships that will last a lifetime.
- I joined at 22 and stayed for nearly three years. Three arcs: M&A in the US, sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, and large corporate engagements back home in Canada.
- The people are the best part. I have been to weddings, started a business, and traveled the world with people I met at the firm.
- The client work is unlike anything else. At such a young age, I was working alongside C-suites and senior executives through large transactions and complex problems.
- The offering: If you want to learn more about life at McKinsey or how to get in, book a free coffee chat with me.
It goes without saying that McKinsey changed my life for the better. Permanently. It taught me so many things, put me in the orbit of incredible people, and let me experience moments that I genuinely never expected to witness — especially at such a young age.
For context, I started at McKinsey at 22 as a Business Analyst in the Montreal office. I stayed for close to three years before leaving at 25. During that time, my experience broke down into three arcs: one year in the United States doing M&A work for private equity clients, one year in the Middle East and Europe serving sovereign wealth funds and corporate sponsors, and one year back home in Canada serving some of the country's largest and most important companies.
There is a lot to say. So let me try to break it down.
The people you meet at the firm are, without question, the single greatest thing about the experience. Some of these folks are real friends of mine today. We have aligned on everything from jokes to values to impact. Real connections.
I have been to weddings of people I met there — including one in Tulum for a friend who actually helped me get into McKinsey in the first place. I have traveled to Oman with a high school buddy who ended up at the firm too — the same guy from that famous Korean BBQ dinner that kicked off this whole journey. I started a business with a McKinsey colleague. I seek personal advice from many of them regularly. These are not LinkedIn connections. These are people I genuinely care about.
That is undeniably one of the greatest things about having spent time at McKinsey. You are surrounded by people who are ambitious, curious, and driven — but also kind, funny, and human. The friendships that come out of it are unlike anything else I have experienced.
The clients and topics you get to engage with at the firm are truly something else. And the depth of ways you can actually help people is so extensive that I need to break it down.
Over my time there, I probably worked on 15 to 20 engagements. Most of my work was in consumer and tech — anything that empowers consumers or software solutions that end up in people's hands. I did commercial due diligences on mobile gaming companies, vendor due diligences on gym franchises, and helped build a mega project in the Middle East. Some of my deals went up to 2.5 billion dollars in transaction value. That still feels a little unreal to type out.
But the wildest part is not the deal size. It is the access.
On my very first due diligence, I was responsible for understanding the target company's numbers and what they meant going forward. Standard enough. But then they gave me the opportunity to validate and problem-solve those findings directly with the deal's advisors — who happened to be former CEOs of some of the biggest gaming companies in the world. I was 23, sitting one-on-one with the person who greenlit a game I spent 150 hours playing when I was 14. That is a surreal experience.
On another transaction — a large corporate buyout — I ended up working every single day with the target's entire product and M&A team. I was the one facilitating meetings, building live synergies models in Excel with their SVPs and directors, and ultimately walking the CEO of a billion-dollar-plus company through it all. Just me. They told us it was some of the strongest work they had seen from any consultancy. So I guess we did alright.
On another engagement, the CFO and I and my team spent entire weeks working hand-in-hand on sale-side materials. At 24, you are in the room with CFOs, and they are treating you like a peer.
And then there was Paris. We were working on a large cross-border buyout for a North American company trying to transact in France. Picture this: we are in the lobby of a beautiful Parisian hotel, the buyout team has slides in their laps, we are going back and forth through figures and macro trends, debating whether the thesis holds before a management meeting with the target. After that meeting, I had to grab a cab to the Champs-Elysees to make a proposal for a private equity gym deal. All in the same afternoon. It felt like something out of a movie.
What makes McKinsey even more interesting is that client work is only one dimension of what you get to do. The firm gives you space to craft your own path in ways that genuinely make the experience your own.
I spent a meaningful amount of time doing non-profit and pro-bono work alongside the office and its leaders. Using our skills and time to leave a positive mark in important causes in our communities was something that really mattered to me.
I also had the chance to work on countless proposals with incredible companies and people. Some of those proposals took me around the world — video game studios in Japan, mega projects in the Middle East, and infrastructure in North Africa. Even the ones that did not lead to engagements were genuinely exciting to work on.
And because I have always cared deeply about learning and education, I spent a lot of my time mentoring new joiners and building materials to help onboard people coming into the firm.
- You travel the world. New York, San Francisco, Paris, Milan, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Amsterdam, Brussels, Muscat — those are just but a few of the cities I personally got to work in. You are not just visiting these places. You are living and working in them alongside incredible clients. That perspective changes you.
- It is one of the best schools you will ever attend. How to approach problems, how to collaborate, how to influence, how to create impact. There are articles calling McKinsey a leadership factory, and it is true. Leadership, impact, and influence are at the center of everything you do. You are always just uncomfortable enough to grow.
- The compensation is real. When you work at one of the best firms in a given field, you are going to be well compensated. I will be honest — I had no clue what to expect going in. Nobody in my family or circle had done anything like this, and I never brought up compensation during my prep or interview process. So when my mom and I saw the offer letter, we could not believe it. I will always remember that reaction. Other paths like investment banking, private equity, and hedge funds can offer similar or slightly higher pay, but the financial stability McKinsey provides right out of school is genuinely life-changing.
- They invest in your future after McKinsey. The firm is incredibly generous when it comes to what comes next. They can sponsor you to pursue a higher education degree at places like Harvard, Stanford, or Oxford. They can promote you directly to the next level. Or they can help place you in incredible roles — internal positions like chief of staff to the Global Managing Partner, or external roles at leading companies. They want you to succeed long after you leave.
For me, I chose to leave and start my own business — to build something from scratch and treat it like my own MBA, with real upside if and when things work out. A year into that journey, I can say the rewards have been very different from a traditional degree, but genuinely exciting. I am proud of what we have built so far.
If you are curious about what life at McKinsey actually looks like, how to get in, or whether consulting is right for you — I am happy to talk about it. Book a free 15-minute coffee chat and ask me anything.
One last thing. McKinsey is not perfect. Nothing is. There are real trade-offs and hard days that come with the experience. I will write about those too — honestly and without sugarcoating. But this post is about the good. And the good was really, really good.
