Bain
Associate Consultant → Consultant
Three years of strategy casework across technology, healthcare, and private equity that taught me how organizations actually function under pressure. I loved the analytical rigor, but left when I realized I wanted to build systems rather than advise them.
Bain — Associate Consultant → Consultant
The systems-training chapter. Bain taught organizations as systems with friction, not as orgcharts — that lens runs underneath every later role.
The direct-promotion-to-Consultant offer makes the leaving cost something; it is easy to leave when you are bad at it.
Pattern that starts here: ambition expanding, then re-examined when the work feels far from the thing.
Bain → Zearn: I wanted to build, not advise.