Senior consultants leaving big firms

A veteran cloud adviser who once held a top strategy role at Deloitte said he would not go back to big consulting because partner incentives, internal politics, and quarterly revenue pressure now outweigh client service and execution. He said large firms increasingly reward politics over competence and treat clients like accounts to mine. (youtube.com) That complaint lands at a moment when senior people are already walking out. Business Insider reported in August 2025 that former senior figures at top consulting firms were leaving for smaller businesses because they wanted faster pace, more influence, and better promotion paths. (msn.com) The old consulting model was a pyramid. A small group of partners sold the work, while a wide base of junior staff did the research, analysis, and slide-making that made the economics work. (hbr.org) Artificial intelligence is now eating the bottom of that pyramid. Harvard Business Review wrote in September 2025 that generative artificial intelligence can automate research, modelling, and analysis, pushing firms toward smaller teams with fewer layers. (hbr.org) That shift changes what clients are buying. If software can produce a neat presentation in minutes, the expensive part is no longer the deck but the person who can make a cloud migration, data pipeline, or artificial intelligence system actually work inside a messy company. (consultingpoint.com) Big firms have kept selling the story that they can lead that work at scale. McKinsey said more than 72% of its workforce was already using its internal artificial intelligence assistant Lilli, while Boston Consulting Group rolled out Deckster and Bain deployed Sage to speed research and presentation work. (consultingpoint.com) Clients have started separating speed from value. The National CIO Review reported that companies including Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and CVS Health found their own technical teams were often better at identifying and executing useful artificial intelligence projects because they knew the workflows and constraints already. (nationalcioreview.com) That same report said some consulting engagements produced polished prototypes but failed when it was time to scale them across the business. In plain terms, firms could show the demo but not run the factory. (nationalcioreview.com) The money is still there. Gartner forecast a $362 billion global consulting market for 2025, with growth tied partly to artificial intelligence and digital engineering work. (gartner.com) So this is not a story about consulting demand disappearing. It is a story about where the best-paid trust is moving: away from giant teams that can promise transformation, and toward smaller firms, independents, and in-house leaders who can show exactly who will build the thing and ship it. (youtube.com)