Voices from the Life After: Five former consultants reflect on the ups and downs of their new careers

Thomas-Graham is also at work writing her third mystery novel. Set at Princeton, it's tentatively called Burnt Orange. "When you are in the same role for 10 years, you have a little more time and ability to focus on something new," she says. "Starting [a new job] has meant I've been on a different learning curve, so I haven't had nearly as much time [to write] as before."
At her pace, we're sure she'll be up to speed within Web-seconds.

Stenning Schueppert, 26
Title Now: Senior analyst, GTCR Golder Rauner, LLC, Chicago
Title Then: Associate consultant, Bain & Co.
Exit Date: February 1999
Gains: Deepening his financial background
Losses: His large peer group

As an associate consultant at Bain & Co., Stenning Schueppert was given the case of a lifetime. But, ultimately, it was not being able to duplicate that experience that drove him away from the profession.
Schueppert was sent to Sidney, Australia, assigned to a fast-moving project and given 100 percent control over a part of it. He figured out a way to look at his piece of the puzzle and solve it. Everyone hailed him as a genius; Schueppert himself thought it was luck.
When he returned to Bain's Chicago office, he expected more of the same excitement. Instead, he was staffed on a project almost identical to the one he was on before Australia.
"The learning curve had flattened out," says Schueppert, who left Bain in February 1999 to become a senior analyst at private equity firm GTCR Golder Rauner, LLC — 17 floors above his old office. "When you really want to say, 'I want my independence. I want to be able to prove this,' you find that you can run with everything from one to eight, but numbers nine and 10 are still going to be done by the senior consultant and the manager."

While Schueppert believes that's indeed how it should be, it didn't make consulting any more fun or challenging for him. It was a matter of control, he says. "At the end of the day, the client will always have the last say."
At GTCR, he has a hand in both venture capital deals and leveraged buyouts, and is getting a financial background that he felt he would never get as a consultant. He initially took a pay cut, but his salary is now above what he would have been making as a consultant.
One thing he misses is the instant peer group — the 12 other people in his age group who were hired by Bain. There are only 17 people total working out of GTCR's Chicago office.
While he doesn't think he'd go back to consulting, Schueppert admits there is no other profession that attracts that kind of talent or provides the wealth of experience gained from the variety of clients and problems. "I would tell any of my friends and family that the best job out of school is a consulting job."

Rob Ende, 33
Title Now: Heads strategic planning at Brandwise.com
Title Then: Consultant, Boston Consulting Group
Exit Date: July 1999
Gains: Seeing the results of your recommendations implemented quickly
Losses: The varied intellectual challenges

Rob Ende had always viewed consulting as a stepping-stone to other things.
"It's really a great door-opener for lots of other opportunities in the business world," he says. Ende should know. Ende left the world of management consulting in July to join Brandwise.com, a comparison-shopping Web business seeded by BCG, Whirlpool, and Hearst Publications.
Ende says he never viewed consulting as a lifetime endeavor. He got the job at BCG after he received his MBA from the Wharton School.
He had to interview at Brandwise just like everyone else. Although BCG had provided the start-up with an interim management team, Ende was not involved and knew next to nothing about the business. By the time he joined, Brandwise was a fully independent company.
His main reason for leaving BCG is that he wanted to be more closely involved with a business for a longer period than the span of a consulting gig.
"I'm much more important here than I ever was at BCG," says Ende at his New York–based dot-com. "The thing that is rewarding and frightening about the position I'm in now is that when I make a recommendation, the next day, someone is actually doing it. It's very rewarding because you see the fruits of your labor very quickly. But, it's also frightening because there is no place to hide. When you're in consulting, there are a lot of layers, so it's easy to feel detached."
The stress levels are more consistent now as opposed to the peaks and valleys he went through in consulting. "But, the thoughts [of work] tend to consume you. You tend to think about it when you wake up and on weekends," says Ende, who saw his cash compensation go down, although he now has stock options. 
Ende, the father of two-children doesn't think he'd go back to consulting, because the lifestyle was too hard on the family. He works about the same 55- to 60-hour week, but his late nights can be planned.
"In consulting, you are driven by the client," he says. "The client's needs come first. And now, I'm the client. This is my business as much as everyone else's."
He does miss the intellectual stimulation, though. "It's not that I don't get that here. But, there is a level of conceptual thinking that goes on day to day at BCG, and you can get into really amazing discussions with people about the problems you are solving. This is a different environment. There are also very smart people here, but we're much more focused on executing and running a business."

Jeannie Anderson
Title Now: Director of business development, SoftCoin, Inc.
Title Then: Senior associate consultant, Bain & Co.
Exit Date: March 1999
Gains: Ability to have greater impact
Losses: Experienced managers as mentors

Jeannie Anderson knew there were some trade-offs in leaving consulting, but she decided to make the leap anyway.
Anderson, a former senior associate consultant at Bain & Co., gave up acquiring new skills in a wide variety of industries in order to help build a business from the inside.

She's now the director of business development at SoftCoin, Inc., an e-marketing service. It's the second dot-com she has helped build up since she left her consulting job in March 1999.
"I'm having fun doing what I'm doing now. I can have more of an impact and it's more rewarding," says Anderson. "The degree of responsibility is greater, and I have more ownership over my  work."
She makes slightly less now than she would have if she had stayed in consulting, but she says her salary is still comfortable. The potential upside on the equity at the dot-coms is much greater than anything she would have made at Bain, she says.
"The equity is risky, though.  When I accepted my jobs with both of these companies, there was no guarantee that they'd make it," Anderson adds. "I know plenty of people whose options in certain companies were worth nothing in the end. You really have to care about more than the money to make it worthwhile."

After working at Bain for about three years, Anderson left to become the business development manager at eGroups, an e-mail group service. It had only 25 employees. By the time she left last October to take on the similar position at a dot-com start-up called SoftCoin, eGroups had grown to 150 people.
Her job, which is to negotiate partnerships with on-line retailers and service providers, is often a roller-coaster ride. "There are some days when it's absolutely amazing and you can't believe you've built this business that is so successful," says Anderson, who adds that she wouldn't go back to consulting. "Other days, you see there are new competitors cropping up or a client gets acquired, and it's hard to see success far down the road."
Now, she works an average of 60 hours a week — 20 hours fewer than she used to — but she's traveling even more. "There is definitely more structure in consulting, which can be a double-edged sword," she says. "With a start-up environment, you can be more informal and make things happen. You don't get caught up in the bureaucracy. But that can be tough as well. It's easier in start-ups for things to fall through the cracks when there is not a clear procedure in place."

Tindley Whipple, 24
Title Now: Executive director, Gus Foundation
Title Then: Business analyst, McKinsey & Co.
Exit Date: May 1999
Gains: Affecting children's lives
Losses: Constant interaction with other people

At a time when a number of her colleagues were leaving management consulting for dot-coms, private equity, and venture capital firms, Tindley Whipple, a business analyst at McKinsey & Co., had a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of 23. She left too, but it wasn't for more money, stock options, or glamour.
"I felt I needed to take some of my drive and ambition and apply it to help kids," says Whipple, now 24 and the executive director of the Gus Foundation. The Chicago-based organization raises money for pediatric brain tumor research.
This is a cause that is unfortunately close to Whipple's heart. When Whipple was a seven-month-old baby, she was diagnosed with hydrocephalus — too much fluid on the brain — a symptom of brain tumors.

Back then, she was considered a miracle baby who survived a risky procedure that had left many children with brain damage. Later, when she worked at McKinsey, she served on the foundation's board.
The Chicago resident thought she'd be a consultant into middle-age. But meeting the neurosurgeon who saved her life got her to think seriously about making a switch.
The decision has come with trade-offs. With a smaller paycheck, she drinks less Starbucks and has fewer big evenings out. New clothes are a luxury.
But she can have immediate impact. Last December, for example, she met with a potential donor. "I give them the sell and tell them why they should give. Then, a check comes in for $76,000," Whipple recalls. "Nothing in consulting made me feel like I do when I open the mail here."
She doesn't do nearly as much traveling as before. Her commute is a walk into the living room, which is where she keeps her office in order to save the foundation money. While Whipple likes the flexibility of working from home, she says she misses the brainteaser-type problems she used to work on at McKinsey, as well as interacting with coworkers.

She works a more normal 40-hour week now, but weekends are often booked with taking sick children on outings. "But I don't consider watching a child with a tumor watching a football game work," says Whipple, who dreams of eventually running a hospital or a large nonprofit, although she hasn't ruled out returning to consulting someday.
She does get wistful sometimes. "Every now and then, I see the 24-year-old millionaires who started their own Internet companies and I have a definite 'What if?' mentality," says Whipple. "But I don't know if I would have been as successful as these people. I don't know if my heart would have been in it."

And for now at least, there are a number of needy youngsters who are very glad it isn't.