ZB,A good question. Very good in fact. Remember what do these partners sell to clients: change (and overwhemingly it involves the imposition of a new IT system, integration of disparate IT systems etc)Very very few really get a commercial role in an oganisation at the pay they want, because they fundamentally don't understand the commercial aspects pf the business. Let me explicate this: you run a multi-year programme at credit suisse integrating five trading hubs IT systems. if you were to apply to credit suisse directly where would you go: into its internal change team. You obviously can't be in charge of a revenue generating part of the business, because you know nothing about the business.The only people I've seen from consultancy that go directly into commercial/strategic (not IT strategy..lord bless!) roles at senior management are from Mck. It really does show you whom the industry respects and whom it thinks just bring a highly commoditised generic offering.I did miss one important points: contacts. If you consult top management on commercial/strategic issues you are more likely to have the opportunity to impress them and land a senior role in that type of field. If however all you do is report to and send vague, unstructured boring status reports to the internal programme manager, the only avenue to get into that org is through the programme director route and hence you'll be doing the same turgid stuff that he does if you join them.ZB
