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Consulting Pride and Prejudice
By Malini
Chapter 1
Posted on Monday, 3 June 2002
It is a fact universally acknowledged that an Ivy League student in possession of a high
GPA and having vague corporate ambitions must be absorbed into the prestigious
echelons of investment banking or management consulting. This fact is so entrenched in
the minds of the graduating seniors and their parents that they consider any firm coming
to recruit on campus the rightful property of one or another of their number.
Mrs. Bennet, an Ivy League parent twice over, with her eldest having graduated from
Cornell and her second currently a senior at Princeton, was reading an e-mail from the
latter one morning in her husband's study when her delighted shriek attracted his
attention.
"Lizzy got called back for final rounds with MCC on Monday!"
"Indeed, my dear? And how is this any different from the numerous interviews and
second rounds she's been sacrificing her classes for over the last four weeks?"
"Oh, you do delight in vexing me! You must know that MCC is one of the "big three"
strategy consulting firms; they send more than half their analyst class to Harvard
Business School every year and most of the rest to Wharton! And there'll be plenty of
time for classes once she's secure about a good job for next year."
"I'm not so sure this is really what Lizzy wants to do fresh out of college. With this whole
recruiting thing she hasn't applied to any graduate programs or even taken her GREs, and
she doesn't really know what she's getting into. It's not like she's had much internship
experience either."
"This is exactly the way you acted over Jane, and look what happened to her. Instead of
getting a solid job at Microsoft as she was perfectly capable of doing with her degree in
computer science, she's working towards a Ph.D. in cognitive science and robotics after
which she'll be over-qualified for any reasonable job and will have an impossible time
finding a tenure track position in a university."
"Jane knows what she wants to do. She's happy with it. That's exactly what I want for
Lizzy. She doesn't know the first thing about consulting. No wonder she's been having a
hard time interviewing!"
"How long will Jane be happy with what she's doing? Once she's finished her degree
she'll be shunted around from university to university as a post-doc, and it doesn't help
that with her interdisciplinary specialization, they won't know where to put her. You
know what Lizzy wants, but we just can't afford to send her to law school with the other
girls at her heels. She'll have to make it on her own, and the smartest thing for her is to
get the best job available so that she can gain some useful work experience, and save
money as quickly as possible. Now, I don't think investment banking is really her thing,
but consulting is just the sort of problem solving challenge that she's bound to enjoy. And
from what I've heard about the intellectual culture at MCC, it's the perfect place for her."
"It's amazing. I can hardly tell your voice apart from those brochures from the MCC info
session that Lizzy sent home the other day."
"I may not have had the benefit of an Ivy League education like your daughters, but I
managed to get them where they are today. It wasn't you who pored over their college
application essays four years ago, and it wasn't you who did mock interviews with Lizzy
over winter break. Don't tell me I don't know what's good for her."
"I'll never attempt to deny, my dear, that you know what's good for the girls. I just want
them to find out on their own."
"They're my children. I can't see them suffer for the mistakes they'll make trying to figure
things out on their own if I don't help them."
The author of the e-mail that had prompted this discussion had herself given a great deal
of thought to the subject under contention. Elizabeth Bennet, having newly turned
twenty-one, was preparing to graduate from Princeton with a major in history, and was
working, when she could spare the time for it, on a thesis about the contribution of St.
Augustine to the European intellectual tradition. She had accomplished this in the face of
tremendous opposition from her mother, who had assumed that the acknowledged high
school science geek would major in engineering, and had been more than a little
surprised when at the High School prize ceremony when her daughter had carried away
along with the anticipated mathematics and chemistry prizes the social studies prize as
well. By this time it was well known that her high school had produced in her only the
second student ever to be admitted to an Ivy League university, the first having been her
elder sister Jane, who had gone to Cornell two years earlier. Elizabeth, by all accounts the
more brilliant student of the two, was less known for her tractability, and having come
home from Princeton after freshman fall after a disappointing experience in her oversized
intro physics class, she had announced her intention of switching over to the major she
was now on the verge of completing. Her mother, always given to extravagance of
expression, had lamented that she was willfully ruining all prospects of a future career by
choosing such an impractical subject.
Elizabeth might well have opted to follow her sister's footsteps into the higher echelons
of the academia, but she was practical enough to realize that such a scheme would not
necessarily answer her more worldly ambitions, which she had not forsaken. The law
school plan did have considerable appeal for her, but perhaps the more so since financial
considerations made it an immediate impossibility. She appreciated the luxury of time to
consider where it was that she really wanted to end up in life. In the meantime the
problem had remained of how she might most profitably fill the intervening years before
she firmly decided one way or another, and Elizabeth would have had to be far more
oblivious to the goings-on around her not to have known what the most practicable
solution was. Year after year prestigious investment banks and management consulting
firms came to Princeton as they did to other elite universities, and year after year some of
the brightest students were absorbed into these ranks, often coming back subsequently as
recruiters and praising their own firms to the hilt. It was rare in other professions for fresh
college graduates to be entrusted with so much responsibility, and it seemed like the
perfect opportunity for an ambitious young person to leave her mark on the world.
Elizabeth, who entertained few false illusions, had calculated her chances as carefully as
she could. Her GPA was high enough to do any consulting firm proud, and was certainly
adequate for investment banking, where grades were in any case less of a consideration.
Her major in a humanities subject was not optimal, but she had enough math and science
classes to establish that the quantitative requirements of the job would be well within her
reach. Though she was almost ashamed to consider matters from this perspective, she had
to acknowledge that with firms trying hard to secure a favourable gender balance, her sex
was a definite point in her favor. And her open and amiable personality made her a good
interview prospect, despite the fact that having spent her summers as a camp counselor,
she had no internship experience. Her camp job, as well as the positions she had held
part-time during the school year she had represented in the best possible light in her
resume and her cover letters, stressing the team work and personal skills they had
required.
Although Elizabeth was still without an offer, she been called for interviews by a sizeable
percentage of the firms to which she had applied, and she was usually making it beyond
the first round, which was typically conducted on campus. It was not yet very late in the
recruiting race, and she had gained valuable experience and feedback from her early
interviews. Just last Saturday she had made it into final rounds at a top Wall Street
investment bank before getting her ding, as rejections are termed in recruiting parlance.
She had called back several of her interviewers, and they had all acknowledged that she
had had a very strong shot at the job, and they encouraged her to exude more enthusiasm
at the prospect. As it happened Elizabeth had had little enthusiasm to exude at the
prospect of an analyst position at an I-bank, which would have required an ninety-hour
workweek at a conservative estimate.
But with management consulting it was different. Elizabeth had an idea that the work
would suit her very well. Certainly she loved traveling, and there were few jobs that
would give her such a good chance at that. She was an excellent team player, and would
be able to work well in the case team environment. She thrived on intellectual stimulation
and variety, and a job where she would move from firm to firm and industry to industry
was infinitely preferable to getting stuck in a rut. She had always preferred Boston, where
many top consulting firms were headquartered, to New York City. If the bonuses in
consulting were not on the scale of investment banks, they were still considerable. And
Elizabeth had to admit that she liked the taste of the professional world she had gotten in
her elegant new suit, the five-star hotels at which she had been put up by the various
firms, and the well appointed conference rooms where she had undertaken the uphill task
of convincing her interviewers that her interest in St. Augustine was motivated by her
underlying fascination with the world of business.
All in all, she was fairly confident she would enjoy the job that would give her the taste
of the working world she needed before deciding once and for all between an academic
and a professional career. Now all she needed to do was to land the job. She had spent the
weekend going over case questions, which were a crucial part of consulting interviews,
and which consisted of a real life consulting scenario in which she would have to play the
role of a consultant, making recommendations based on the limited information available
to her. She also flipped through her notes on Economics 101 just in case she was weak on
some of the basics. For the personality interview, she had already honed most of her
answers through the trial by fire of the earlier interviews, and had finally nailed the
perfect answer to that inevitable question about her greatest weakness, which by the logic
of interviewing had necessarily to be a hidden strength.
By the time she was done she was ready to conquer the world, and landing at Logan
airport on Monday morning in her crisp navy suit, she looked it. She never faltered
through the four hours of interviews with consultants at every conceivable level, and at
lunch at a celebrated Boston seafood restaurant, she made a considerable impression on
the senior partner seated beside her. Strolling down Newbury Street that evening, she was
already mentally beginning to pick out furnishings for her projected apartment. By the
time she returned to the hotel, there had already been one message for her, and the partner
called again within minutes of her returning to her room. Returning to Princeton for
classes the following morning, she knew already that she would be coming back in two
weeks for Super Saturday, when she would be able to relax, and it would be their turn to
sell the firm to her. And before the formal offer letter was even put in the mail, Mrs.
Bennet's neighbors had already heard that her precocious Princetonian would be starting
as a consultant at the Massachusetts Consulting Company after her graduation.
Chapter 2
Posted on Monday, 3 June 2002
William Darcy pulled into the spot marked CEO, Excent Technologies. He got out of the
car and looked around in satisfaction. The logo of his company looked striking on the
squat glass cube of the building, and the floor that he had leased would be a far better
home for his fledgling company than the dorm-room where he had started it, the garage
and spare bedroom at his parents' house that he had later invaded, and even the three-
room office suite out of which they had operated for the last few months. He could
envision them in years to come commissioning an entire office building of their own, but
he was more than proud of their progression to date. In an economy where tech stocks
were soaring and new startups were mushrooming every day, any new pre-IPO enterprise
was a cause for at least cautious optimism, and with a product that had already begun to
capture a healthy market share and that, unlike so many portals gone public, was already
generating real revenue, Excent had better odds than most of survival. As founder and
CEO, William Darcy was already a rich man, and when his company went public in a
few months, he was likely to become a paper billionaire. Darcy had planned for this event
to coincide with his twenty-fifth birthday.
As he walked past the short row of cars that had better parking spots than his own, Darcy
barely noticed how out of place the boxy late eighties Volvo he had driven since high
school was among the luxury fleet of the other presidents and CEOs whose offices were
located in the building. He walked into the building, paused for a few minutes to chat
with the receptionist, and took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. Had she not
remembered his friendly manners and open smile, she might well have questioned his
credentials and his business in the building. It was not every CEO who came into the
office in shorts, a flannel shirt, and tevas.
Darcy spent a few minutes admiring the wooded greenery of Reston from his window.
He was more than happy with his choice of office location. His sister had been
disappointed that he had chosen a suburban location - the young high schooler had
visions of her entrepreneur brother ruling the roost in a posh down-town Washington DC
office, or at least in Crystal City, but Darcy himself much preferred the picturesque
environs of the suburb where they had grown up. Besides, the rents were more affordable
here, the amenities were unparalleled, and Reston had already gained quite a reputation
for being a center of technology on the east coast. No, a downtown office, much as it
might have appealed to Georgiana's aesthetic sensibilities, was hardly the right place for a
company like his. He planted himself in his ergonomic chair, and reached for the phone
as he heard a knock on the door.
"Hey, Will. You ready to have that talk?"
"Yes, come on in, guys. I was just about to call you."
The guys were Sean Fitzwilliam and Caroline Bingley, the other two members of the so-
called triumvirate that had collectively founded and now run Excent. Caroline and
William had been contemporaries at CalTech - she had stayed to finish her major in
computer science after he dropped out, realizing despite Richard Feynman and Murray
Gell-Mann that he did not want an academic career in physics. He had moved back from
Pasadena to DC, where Caroline had joined him a year later. Sean was a few years older,
and he had spent a few years at Microsoft after college before joining his cousin and
Caroline in their start-up. Sean and Caroline were brilliant coders, while William, who
had the most theoretical bent of the three, was merely competent. But the basic idea
behind Excent's flagship product had been a brainwave of William's, and the other two,
who were chiefly responsible for its execution, were always ready to give him credit.
Now of course Excent was far more than a three-person operation, but Ian and Caroline
were still actively involved in the actual programming aspects, and had happily allowed
the management responsibilities to fall on William.
"What was it you wanted to talk about? Did Caroline tell you about the trouble she was
having with the source code for the...?
"Will you drop it, Sean? You're always trying to make me look stupid in front of
everybody."
"Guys, calm down. I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Since Caroline doesn't want to tell you, let me enlighten you on our newest beta-
product..."
"Since Caroline doesn't want to tell me, it's obviously not such a big deal. If you must
give her a hard time do it on your own time. There's something I need to talk to you guys
about."
"What's on your mind, Will?"
"It's actually something I've been thinking about for some time now. We're growing
incredibly fast and we have a pretty healthy cash flow. We've only existed for about three
years and already there are so many companies competing with us in what was virtually
an unexploited niche when we started out. But we aren't growing anywhere near as fast as
the market is. And the moment someone else comes out with a better technology it's all
over for us."
"Of course not. If it's R&D you're worried about Ian and I have that nicely under control.
You should see some of the ideas we have for our next release. You should really get
more involved. We could use your help."
"I would love to get more involved. That's why we started this company. But lately all I
seem to be doing is bookkeeping, and following up on legalese, and all these odds and
ends that seem to go along with running a company. I've been playing catch-up on econ
and finance and all the stuff I didn't care about in college, and I'm beginning to come to
the conclusion that me staying up nights reading management textbooks is not the right
way to be running this company."
"You've been reading management textbooks? I can't believe they get away with making
an entire academic discipline out of common sense!"
"Common sense it may be, but it's common sense about stuff we know nothing about.
We're a company based on one product, and we sink or swim with it. We've been doing
well so far because it's a good product, and people need it. But as a company, we don't
really have a vision; we don't know where we want to go, and we don't have a clue how
to do business in the real world."
"Are you saying that we're in some kind of financial trouble, Will?"
"No, Sean, we're flourishing. I just want to keep it that way."
"So do you know what you want to do about it?"
"Yes, actually. I think we need to bring in a strategy firm to help us figure these things
out. I'm going to ask a few firms to submit bids, and I need you guys to okay the
expenditure."
"Do you really think it's worth it, Will? I mean, you know these consulting firms. They're
just a bunch of twenty-somethings making this stuff up as they go along."
"Caroline, we're just a bunch of twenty-somethings making this stuff up as we go along,
and we've done pretty well for ourselves. They're going to know a whole lot more about
business than we do, plus it's always healthy to have an outside perspective. I think it's
worth seeing what they have to say."
"Will, you know we trust you with all this stuff. If you think it's a good idea, go for it.
We'll be more than happy to cooperate with whomever you bring in."
"Alright, thanks, guys. I do think it's a good idea."
Sean and Caroline headed back to their own offices, their minds already straying to the
new software product they were working on. Darcy turned back to his computer screen,
looking at the initial responses he had already received. Looking at the offers he made a
mental shortlist of the ones he would invite back for a more extensive pitch. Even at this
stage there was something particularly attractive about one of the bids, and after going
through all the meetings and presentations he was comfortable with his final choice.
MCC would be coming in to consult at Excent Technologies.
"So, Elizabeth, you're up for allocation on your other fifty percent again? What cases
have they offered you?"
Elizabeth looked up from her laptop and turned around as her office-mate started
speaking. Charlotte Lucas was a third-year consultant at MCC, and the two of them were
reasonably good friends despite the tendency of analyst consultants to socialize within
their classes. Many of Elizabeth's good friends were first years like her, at MCC or other
Boston-area consulting firms, but thanks to Charlotte she had met quite a few people
from other years as well.
"Well, there's the accounting piece for a pharmaceuticals company, but I did accounting
on my last case, and I'd like to try something a little different this time. The other one
they offered me is a B-to-B pre-IPO internet start-up. Sounds kind of neat. I think that's
the one I'll take."
"I still think it's funny that they call these firms pre-IPO. There's nothing predetermined
about going public. In the good old days being privately owned was a good thing. Come
to think of it, we're privately owned."
"Come, Charlotte. I think you're just jealous. You can go tell your friends that you work
at a pre-IPO consulting firm if it'll make you feel any better."
"So much of our business is coming from these tech firms nowadays. I've heard estimates
of up to 70% of new cases. And we are definitely oversold. Otherwise there's no way a
first year like you would have been double-staffed within six weeks of joining."
"Well, I like the double-staffing model. It keeps me from getting bored or obsessed. And
so far, my peaks haven't ever coincided."
"Oh, they will. You've been here what, four months? That's not even long enough for the
glamour of traveling to fade!"
"You'll never convince me that weekly trips aren't glamourous. I'm already looking
forward to DC."
"You won't be saying that when you're stuck for hours in Dulles airport, or better yet, in
some hub through which you'll be routed, waiting for the snowdrifts at Logan to be
cleared."
"Oh, hush! As if you didn't take this job to be the chick on the planes!"
"I took this job as a way to escape to the glamourous east coast, and now look at me. I
don't think I've had a single case that hasn't been in the corn-belt I was running away
from."
"Well, maybe you'll get lucky and get pulled in on this one. You're coming close to the
end of one of your cases too, right?"
"I should be so lucky! What's the company called, anyway?"
"Excent. Dot-com, I need hardly add. I was reading about it in PC World the other day. It
was started by this guy who dropped out of physics at CalTech a few years ago."
"A drop-out physics major? A man after your own heart then!"
"Hardly! I didn't exactly get disillusioned and light out into the territories. I switched
gears into history."
"Undergrad thesis in history, multi-million dollar corporation. It's a toss-up, I'd say."
"Thanks for making me feel like I wasted my life by staying in school and landing an
entry level job at which I make almost twice the national median household income."
"I aim to please."
Notes:
Consulting-speak and other things that might be worth clarifying but are just as likely to
be self-explanatory:
Analyst consultant: In consulting and investment banking, undergrad hires typically
come in for about three years or less, and are often called analysts. Graduate hires
(typically business school), or the people who stay on beyond three years or so, are
called associates. (This is all much more clear-cut in investment banking. In consulting
there are some firms where the entry-level position is called associate; then there are
those where everyone's called a consultant, and there are no titles to tell you how senior
people are.) Whether people are basically shunted out after two years or whether they
are encouraged to stay depends on the culture of the firm.
Case: sometimes called project. Basically, this is the unit in which consulting work is
sold. As of now, MCC has been hired for one case at Excent, although its scope has not
been clearly delimited. Based on their findings they may be re-hired for subsequent
cases, which is not uncommon. Clients with whom consulting firms have a lot of ongoing
business become relationship clients.
Allocations, 50%, and double-staffing: Depending on the firm, junior level consultants
work on either one or two cases at a time - they are either single or double-staffed. My
make-believe firm, MCC, is on the double-staffing model, and one of Elizabeth's cases
just ended, so that she is up for 50% allocation on a new case. Consultants do have some
choice in the case on which they are staffed, but their choices are often fairly limited, and
often they are just shunted into whatever's open. There is some attention paid to the
trajectory of their careers, and firms typically have some sort of a personal development
model in which they have to rotate through various different roles in their first two years.
After that people usually have some control about whether or not they might want to
specialize in a particular area or remain as a generalist. But all this averages out over a
few years. At any given point, a consultant may just have to suck it up and take
whatever's thrown at him or her.
R&D: Research and Development
IPO: Initial Public Offering
B-to-B: Business to Business. The more profitable model of e-commerce (as compared to
the more glamourous B-to-C, which is business to consumer).
Chapter 3
Posted on Monday, 3 June 2002
William Darcy was not a man known for his adherence to ritual, yet the receptionist with
whom he never failed to exchange a few friendly words before heading up to his office
was more than a little surprised to see him join the little crowd waiting for the elevator
rather than taking the stairs in threes as he was wont to do. That the reason for this
deviation from his routine might have been the addition to the usual crowd of middle-
aged slightly over-weight middle managers of a young lady in a crisp navy suit never
occurred to that unsuspecting woman. Had she stopped to think about it she would
probably have reflected that she was hardly likely to be his type. And the fact that he
never attempted to exchange a word with her, while she apparently devoted more of her
attention to the overpriced coffee product with an over-elaborate quasi-Italian name than
she cared to bestow upon him, would have seemed, on the whole, to vindicate that good
lady's judgment.
And yet, as it happened, she was mistaken. For William was piqued at the appearance of
the young lady. He would have scorned the charge of having fallen in love at first sight,
and though young men are notoriously dense as to the state of their feelings, in this case
he would have been right. William was not in love, nor was he even interested enough to
initiate introductions. But he was curious enough to wonder where she might be working.
For indeed, by her manner of dress, she might have been employed at any of the various
corporations housed in that building excepting his own. It was true that hitherto none of
them had ever demonstrated the good judgment of procuring an employee who had left
any sort of an impression on him. The women William had encountered so far in the
building seemed to favor the polyester power suits in unbecomingly bright colors that
were such a DC staple, and it didn't help that their outerwear and shoes were usually of
the casual sort that could never properly complete such an ensemble. William had never
understood the appeal of sneakers with suits - he understood that these women usually
changed out of them at their offices, but he never encountered them there, and he did not
think DC weather justified the necessity for super-sensible footwear. He was particularly
impressed by this young lady's smart but sensible footwear, although it did occur to him
that he couldn't recall ever having paid particular attention to an attractive woman's shoes
before. But William was an optimist at heart, and now that his hopes had been justified,
he felt a sort of proprietary interest in this young lady and her employer.
Elizabeth was suffering from fewer misapprehensions. The receptionist had been
mistaken in imagining all her attention occupied by her caffeinated beverage, for its
stimulating kick had had its anticipated effect in shaking off the morning stupor which
was a legacy of her four years in college, and she was covertly attentive to her new
surroundings. Though she had not recognized William from the one outdated picture she
had seen, she was well aware that he could only have been under the employ of one firm
housed in that building. Looking at his mode of dress, she wondered again if she should
have worn something a little more casual. As an outside consultant she could hardly dress
down to the extent that the employees of Excent seemed to, but she had acquired an
extensive wardrobe of the business casual attire she usually sported in Boston, and in
which she might have been a little less out of place here. With a determined effort she
cast these doubts out of her mind. It was, after all, her first visit to the offices of Excent,
and she was determined to represent her firm in the best and most professional light.
There would be plenty of opportunities to dress down later, when she had gotten to know
the lay of the land. On this occasion, too, she had already secured an appointment with
Sean Fitzwilliam, one of the founders of Excent, and was hoping to get some time with
Will Darcy himself. Besides, she had always meant to conquer the world in this suit.
Sneaking another look at the young man, she wondered whether all tech geeks really
needed to dress in these incredibly boring clothes that seemed to be the badge of their
tribe. He was far from unattractive, with striking features, a complexion that was perhaps
just a little too pale, and a tangle of slightly unruly dark brown hair, but his clothes hardly
showed him to his best advantage. He was wearing cargo shorts of a sort of dirty khaki
color, which, though they revealed a pair of well-formed legs, were hardly flattering. For
his feet he had gone for the socks-and-teva combination that Elizabeth had never
understood. Surely if you needed the socks to keep you warm it was time to wear real
shoes instead. His white T-shirt seemed as though it might have been snug enough to
show off a lean lightly muscled frame, but the un-ironed flannel shirt hanging over it
effectively blocked the view and cancelled whatever points he might have scored with the
t-shirt. So much wasted potential - in a well-cut dark suit, this guy would have caught any
woman's attention. Elizabeth understood that formals weren't the thing for everybody all
the time, but hadn't this guy heard of urban grunge? In low-slung dark jeans and a snug
sweater - olive green, maybe, or charcoal gray, with grungy hiking boots to complete the
ensemble, and maybe he could even pull off the spiky hair look - that would be a picture
any girl would want.
Startled though he was that she alighted on his floor, William had not lost command of
his manners entirely, and he courteously held the door open for her before heading
towards the coffee machine for his far less expensive caffeine jolt, wondering all the
while which of his employees might be expecting such a visitor at this hour. Although he
had spoken to Rajat, the team leader from MCC, only the day before, he had momentarily
forgotten that the other consultants from the firm might also have work on the premises,
and that he had designated the spare conference room for them to camp out in.
Elizabeth smiled her thanks at the guy, mildly impressed that a techie should have the
manners to hold the door open for her, and reminded herself that she was here with a real
job to do that did not involve rewriting the dress code at Excent, however unfortunate it
might be. As she headed towards the conference room, she made a point of noting where
Sean Fitzwilliam's office was, so that she would be able to find it when she came to talk
to him in half an hour. It was right next door to that of William Darcy, she noticed,
wondering idly whether or not he was in yet, and when she might be able to meet him.
She picked a convenient spot for herself on the conference table and booted up her laptop
waiting for the other MCC consultants to come in. She knew Megan would be here, at
least, but she wasn't sure about some of the others, with whom she wasn't working as
closely. Megan was a third-year; she was managing Elizabeth on this particular case, and
the two had built up a good rapport in working closely together. It was under Megan's
guidance that Elizabeth had been working on competitor analyses for the last three
weeks, and the two of them had put together a considerable document which Megan and
Rajat, the team leader, had presented to Will Darcy and his executive team, consisting of
Sean Fitzwilliam and Caroline Bingley, a few days earlier.
On the whole the presentation had gone over fairly well, but Caroline Bingley had
apparently been unimpressed by the level of detail that they had been able to go into.
When Will had hired MCC it had been the height of the tech boom and the company had
had plenty of money to spare. Now, a little over a month later, things were just starting to
look a little tight. Will had been forced to defer the IPO on the advice of their bankers, a
lot of their competitors were slashing jobs and paring down expenses, and quite a few had
already gone under. Under these circumstances Caroline took the view that the rather
expensive consulting firm Will had brought in was an unnecessary drain on their cash
flow. She did not believe that the outsiders understood their product or their business, and
did not believe that a generalized solution would help Excent.
Rajat was normally very good at managing client expectations, but he sensed that
Caroline would remain resistant to whatever findings MCC was able to report. He did
intend to be careful that her explicitly voiced criticisms be addressed to whatever extent
possible. He had briefed Elizabeth and Megan on his take on the situation, and Elizabeth
had come down to DC today specifically to interview some of the people in various
capacities here at Excent to get a better sense of how their day-to-day business did work.
First on her list was Sean Fitzwilliam, one of the heads of R&D, as well as the COO to
the extent that the company had one at all. Rajat had recommended Sean over Caroline,
since he had been far more cooperative at the meetings so far, and he had been very
pleasant over the telephone, giving her as much time as she needed. Then she would
speak to some of the program managers and actual coders, as well as some people on the
marketing end. Tomorrow she had managed to schedule fifteen minutes with the dread
Caroline herself, but both Rajat and Megan had warned her not to expect too much
productive information from that interview.
Elizabeth looked at Megan as she came in soon afterwards and groaned inwardly. She
had known she would be overdressed, but looking at the other girl she realized how
much. In Boston, Megan sported an extremely sharp wardrobe compared to the firm in
general. Here she had come in wearing a pair of khaki Capri pants, and a smart but casual
fitted white patterned shirt. It was a good look on her, but not the sort of thing she would
ever have worn into their office except perhaps on weekends. Megan, obviously, was
thinking along the same lines.
"Nice suit, Elizabeth, but I'm surprised you thought it was necessary here!"
"Well, you know, first visit to client site and all that. I'm always scared of getting it
wrong, so I just thought I'd go all out and knock their socks off, but I'm beginning to
think I might just scare them."
"Who knows, it might work. Not that I expect Will Darcy and his cronies to know too
much about a good Italian cut, but it does leave an impression. Good thing you're not
seeing Caroline today, though. It would definitely rub her the wrong way."
"I need to meet this dragon lady. Why are you all so scared of her?"
"She's hardly a dragon lady - the opposite, actually. She can be quite nice, and I get the
sense that the employees love her. She's just the type of woman who never notices what
she's wearing herself, and tends to assume that women who dress well are ditzes."
"So I should show up tomorrow in my thrift-shop best, and that'll win her over?"
"I doubt you or I are capable of dressing down to the extent that would satisfy her. We'll
just have to find other ways to prove that brains are a part of the package. What's your
agenda for today?"
"A bunch of interviews, starting with Sean Fitzwilliam."
"You'll like Sean. He's a fun guy, and he's been really helpful. That's a good place to start,
but you should let him know that may need to go back to him later. He's the person I'd
run things by for confirmation."
"And what are you up to?"
"Rajat asked for some economics slides for the industry deck. I'll be crunching some
numbers on that. We can discuss them in the afternoon and see what we can fill in."
"I should probably head on over. I'll see you when I get back."
She headed over to where Sean's office was located, and paused at the open door,
knocking gently, and then entered. The desk was vacant, and Elizabeth was momentarily
nonplused, when she noticed someone standing by the window. The flannel shirt looked
familiar, and when he turned around she realized that it was the guy she had encountered
on the elevator. Wishing she had introduced herself at the time, she wondered once again
why it was that tech-geeks needed to dress so unif...
Plik z chomika:
gaspwill
Inne pliki z tego folderu:
You Sang to Me(1).doc (2540 KB)
Twilight of the Abyss.doc (271 KB)
To Love Again(1).doc (1746 KB)
Through The Fog.doc (35 KB)
The Role of a Lifetime(1).doc (522 KB)
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