How McKinsey's tech work took my breath away

When I learned about McKinsey a little more than a year ago, I was surprised. The McKinsey I knew as an MBA student was an analytical powerhouse, not a place for creative design or tech product development. I love the messy creative process, so I didn’t think McKinsey was for me.

An unexpected surprise

Then I thought about how much the world has changed since 2010 – the iPad only just launched, Instagram wasn’t part of Facebook, and Slack wasn’t even a thing. I got over my initial skepticism and decided to find out more about tech careers at McKinsey.

What I found nearly took my breath away. It was obvious McKinsey had invested a lot in design, analytics and software engineering since I was in school. I wanted to be part of the team.

An unforgettable demo day

I’ve been here about six months, and I’ve already had several memorable moments. One was while I was serving a pharma company. I was acting as a product manager to design and build a new approach for drug research and development (R&D) using advanced analytics. My main client had the idea years ago, but lacked the means to do much with it.

After our team of data scientists, software engineers, designers, and clients worked together on the concept for many weeks, demo day arrived. When my client saw the screen, he jumped up to clap, and took a photo of it like he was taking a picture of his first born child. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone so excited.

Opportunities to experiment and learn

My job usually involves shaping products, services and systems that have never existed before. McKinsey provides a safe place for experimenting. I learn best by doing, so I’ve benefited greatly from bouncing my ideas off of colleagues. I have so many opportunities for organized and informal learning—sometimes I can’t take advantage of all of them.

Yerrie Inline
Yerrie Inline

Our McKinsey senior partners have provided guidance on how to navigate the firm, and are keen to support and sponsor my career path. My peers have deep knowledge in their fields and are eager to share the latest tools, interesting articles, and random GIFs with me to help me get up to speed and have fun doing it.

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About Yerrie

London-based Yerrie is a McKinsey product manager. She loves cooking, often without recipes. Yerri likes to recharge in the pool, and in her spare time is learning to juggle. She also has an MBA from Harvard Business School; a master's in public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government; and a bachelor's in economics form MIT.

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