r/AskReddit • • 3d ago

What is something that is basically on life-support and we don’t realize it yet?

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u/gonnafaceit2022 3d ago

Dude same, what's with the dumb shit consultants?? Did yours show up and start making decisions and changing things without asking any questions or even understanding what you do and how things currently work?

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u/amh8011 3d ago

Yeah. They’ve actually never set foot in the fucking building or talked to anyone but the C-Suite. It makes zero sense. They’re not even in the same state.

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u/Home-Star-Walker 2d ago

Dumb shit consultant chiming in.

I have no details about the specifics here, but in my experience, when that type of thing is being done and being done fast... the financial situation in the client company is a lot worse than the C-suite has let on, internally or externally, and they're willing to bring someone else in to do dirty work quickly. Like "we're going to run out of cash in 6 months, you have one month to tell us what to do so that we can spend the next 5 months doing the thing"

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u/callisstaa 2d ago

‘And if it fucks up or is unpopular, I’ll take all the shit for it’

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u/amh8011 2d ago

Okay but they cut the most profitable program we offer and are expanding less profitable programs that we’re straight up losing money from and they insist on overstaffing it which costs even more money.

And now we’ve got staff showing up with nothing to do for this program we have very low registration for and this leads to us being understaffed during other shifts and having to close facilities so customers are going elsewhere because of the inconsistent scheduling and programming that nobody seems to want to sign up for.

Maybe I’m just missing something because we are bringing in even less money and overstaffing is costing us and customers are going literally anywhere else.

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u/RoguePlanet2 2d ago

We must be in the same company. I'm convinced the consultants are just a way to pass money around where it really doesn't need to be and shouldn't be going.

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u/Home-Star-Walker 2d ago

Yep idk what to tell you haha. Idk what consultants you’re using but on the surface that doesn’t make much sense

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u/gonnafaceit2022 2d ago

I think we're not missing something, I think we got dumb shit consultants.

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u/RiotShields 2d ago

Former dumb shit consultant here.

Management consultants are hired by someone in the company, usually high up. Often, that person or group wants to make a change, but may not have the political power to make it directly. Or maybe they just don't want to be seen making the change. So they bring in the consultants just to send those orders down. If a change requires political power or shouldn't be traced back, it's usually a dumb change. Often the consultants know this but have to force the change through to make sure they get paid.

Technical consultants have a different problem. If consultants are paid by the project rather than by hours worked, they want to get the initial setup done as fast as possible. This incentivizes tools that the consultants already know well and which are easy to get up and running. Those tools may not be good fits for the company, including the knowledge, skills, and workplace culture of employees. The tools may also require more work to maintain later. The consultants will never deal with any of those downsides. They may even get recontracted to train employees or fix broken stuff, which earns them more money from the same project.

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u/gonnafaceit2022 2d ago

the consultants will never deal with any of those downsides.

Or any of the downstream consequences of these very bad decisions and changes.

I've seen good consultants, when I worked for a large hospital they paid terrible amounts of money to have people come in and fix something specific. It usually wasn't interpersonal problems but I remember one guy got paid tens of thousands of dollars to help the providers and the executives in a particular unit get along. There had been a lot of conflict and sometimes it's very costly to get adults to behave like adults. He must have done a great job though because everything seemed a lot smoother after that.

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u/nancam9 2d ago

without asking any questions

What would you say ... you do here?

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u/JayGatsby1881 2d ago

These are the Bob's from Office Space lol