Does anyone else think most consulting firms are completely and utterly boring? That the work is often high-pressured yet mind-numbingly dull and that most of the people in the office make the local pub bore's monologues seem riveting?

Bushy Eyebrows - Are you always this much of a cynic? You should contemplate early retirement and allow people with more energy and enthusiasm to fill your ageing shoes. You come over on this forum as someone who has spent a bit too long in Consulting and perhaps someone who should have made the transition into Industry a few years earlier to see through to fruition the full output of your work.

Once you become a partner, you are effectively running a business rather than focused solely on technical delivery of work.Plus, I'm not necessarily interested in seeing through to fruition the full output of my work; that's for the delivery bods to get on with. I'm interested in doing what I do and making money.

Understood Bushybrows, which is exactly why I suggested that a few years earlier you...Perhaps your skills & personality could have been better suited to a more delivery-orientated Industry-side position?

You certainly don't come over as someone who is 'interested in doing what I do'. You come over as someone with deep professional frustrations and major disillusionment.

[i]Perhaps your skills & personality could have been better suited to a more delivery-orientated Industry-side position?[/i]Maybe but they are also very well suited to what I do at present.

[i]Perhaps your skills & personality could have been better suited to a more delivery-orientated Industry-side position?[/i]Maybe but they are also very well suited to what I do at present.I make a fortune!

I hope your "fortune" permits you to partake in sufficient out of work 'pleasures' to appropriately offset your obvious deep rooted professional frustrations and The Boredom that kicked off this dialogue. What does a partner earn these days? And what's your work life balance like?

[i]I hope your "fortune" permits you to partake in sufficient out of work 'pleasures' to appropriately offset your obvious deep rooted professional frustrations and The Boredom that kicked off this dialogue.[/i] Yes it does, but the only thing that keeps me here is the pay really. If it weren't for the pay, I would have retired a long time ago. Whereas I'm not keen on the work, the pay just about makes up for it.[i]What does a partner earn these days?[/i] It varies by firm and whether you're an equity partner. At a reasonable sized practice, £300K is a good starting point. At some of the larger places, £700K is not uncommon.[i]And what's your work life balance like?[/i]Well I always look after the junior ones (they are our future) and insist that they leave the office by 6.00pm and don't do e-mails or work in the evening or at weekends. I always get out by 6.00pm. If something "comes up" I just say I have a client dinner to get to.

Thanks - that's about the package range I'd anticipated but you're experiencing a significantly better work-life-balance than I'd expected. I now know which consulting firms you don't work for!It's great that you encourage the 'juniors' to get out at 6pm and leave work behind them at the weekend & evenings, something that in my experience isn't at all the norm across the leading (Strategy) consultancies, in fact I'm half tempted to send you my CV! 8am-9pm is a fairly standard day where I work coupled with some weekend hours too, but for me it's a short-term (2-4 yr) investment for mid-long term career development. I now understand (given compensatory priorities) why perhaps Industry wasn't a sensible earlier career pursuit for you, it's my understanding that only a small percentage of Industry-side ex-consultants manage to achieve those salary levels.