Pay, hours and happiness post-consulting
Hello!
Ask a consultant planning their next career move what they're optimising for, and you'll usually hear the same answer: better hours, without giving up too much pay.
Sensible. Except the data says something strange.
We asked thousands of current and former consultants what they actually earn, what hours they work – and how they feel about both. This produced some genuinely surprising results.
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First, the unsurprising part. Some industries offer high pay but demand long hours. Others don't pay that well but offer great hours. And then there are a few places that offer a pretty sweet balance between the two.
Here are a few interesting insights from the data:
1/ Pharma & life sciences is the standout deal: salaries are 17.9% above the cross-industry average, on slightly fewer hours than average.
2/ Private equity pays brilliantly – 12.2% above average – but the hours are among the longest of any industry. You earn more, but you hand over a lot of evenings and weekends for it.
3/ Startups sit bottom: salaries are 22.6% below average, and there are no short working hours to make up for it.
If pay-per-hour were all you cared about, you could stop reading here. But almost nobody actually works that way – and the satisfaction data proves it.
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We asked the same people how satisfied they are with their pay and hours. And suddenly the ranking transforms.
People working in startups are among the happiest, with satisfaction way ahead of what their pay and hours might imply. Charities top the satisfaction ranking despite pay 21.6% below average. And professional services, a perfectly decent deal on paper (the hours are long but pay is good), comes dead last in terms of satisfaction.
In nearly two decades of watching consultants build careers, I've seen two things drive this gap:
1/ When people are unhappy in a role, they'll tell you they're unhappy with the pay and hours – whatever the pay and hours. Nobody rates their pay in isolation; they rate how they feel about the whole job. A well-paid Partner who's miserable will say she's underpaid. Someone earning below average in a role they love will say they're fairly rewarded. The same pay feels fair in a role you believe in and insulting in one you resent.
2/ People want control over their hours, not just fewer of them. Founders typically work more than they did in consulting and mind it less – they're in the driver's seat. In consulting, your evenings belong to someone else's panic: the client leaning on the Partner, the Partner on the Manager, the Manager on the Associate. So even if you work long hours, as long as you have control over them, you could be perfectly happy with your hours.
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To me, this is the real lesson here: satisfaction with your job and career is only partly driven by how much you make and how much you work. So before making a career move, I always encourage people to really get clear on their priorities and on what gives them (and saps their) energy.
You can see the full data in the article linked below – rankings on pay, hours and happiness across 24 industries.
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All the best,
Rich & the OUB team
