Serpent Successfully Monetizes Swallowing Own Tail, Reports Strong Q4

NEW YORK — In what industry analysts are calling "the most elegant act of corporate auto-cannibalism since Kodak invented digital photography and then died," McKinsey & Company announced this week that it has successfully completed a three-decade project to create a framework for workforce automation, sell that framework to every industry on Earth, and then apply it to itself.

The serpent, sources confirm, has swallowed its tail. The tail was billable. The swallowing was also billable. Q4 results exceeded expectations.

"We have a workforce of 60,000," CEO Bob Sternfels announced on Harvard Business Review's IdeaCast—a podcast for people who describe themselves as "lifelong learners" in LinkedIn bios and think "disruption" is a personality trait. "That's 40,000 humans and 25,000 agents."

The 25,000 AI agents, which McKinsey refers to as "colleagues," were not available for comment. They were busy.

The announcement represents the culmination of what historians will someday call "the most profitable suicide note in corporate history." For thirty years, McKinsey charged approximately $50 billion to tell every industry the same thing: Your humans are expensive. Your processes are inefficient. Here's a 200-slide deck on why you should automate. Here's an invoice.

The slides had titles like "Unlocking Value Through Workforce Optimization" and "The Digital Imperative: Transform or Die." They were presented by 27-year-olds in Patagonia vests who had never been fired, to 54-year-olds who were about to fire thousands of people based on the slides.

The bills were enormous. The results were mixed. The methodology was proprietary.

And now—in a twist that absolutely everyone except McKinsey saw coming—McKinsey has used the McKinsey methodology on McKinsey.

The Math That Nobody Asked For

According to figures the CEO initially misstated and then corrected at CES in Las Vegas (a conference where companies announce products nobody asked for to journalists who will forget about them in a week, held in a city specifically designed for decisions you'll regret), McKinsey's AI agent count has grown from "a few thousand" 18 months ago to 25,000 today.

At current growth rates—733% over 18 months—McKinsey will have more AI agents than the population of Monaco by Q3, more than Iceland by Q1 2027, and more than the number of McKinsey employees who thought their jobs were safe by approximately last Tuesday.

The Euphemism That Launched a Thousand Layoffs

Sternfels stated that his goal is for every McKinsey employee to be "enabled by at least one or more agents."

Let us pause on that word: enabled.

Not "assisted." Not "supported." Not "augmented." Enabled. As if consultants were previously disabled. As if they were sitting in the dark, unable to consultant, waiting for an AI agent to switch on the lights.

Historical Context:

1908: "Every horse enabled by at least one automobile" — Horses: unemployed

1955: "Every calculator operator enabled by at least one computer" — Operators: unemployed

1995: "Every travel agent enabled by at least one website" — Agents: unemployed

2025: "Every consultant enabled by at least one agent" — Consultants: "leveraging new opportunities"

The enabling, McKinsey assures us, will continue until morale improves.

The Case Interview Ouroboros

In a moment of either profound self-awareness or its complete absence, Sternfels mused on the podcast that McKinsey might soon ask candidates:

"If a 40,000-person consulting firm added 25,000 AI agents to its workforce in under two years, how would that change its competitive advantage?"

This is a real thing the CEO said. On a podcast. Publicly. While being recorded.

The correct answer, which any candidate trained in McKinsey methodology would provide, is: "The 40,000 humans should update their LinkedIn profiles."

The candidate who answers correctly will, of course, be replaced by an AI agent trained on their correct answer. The ouroboros is complete. The serpent has swallowed its own billable hours.

Vibe-Coding: A Linguistic Crime

Not to be outdone, Boston Consulting Group—McKinsey's eternal blood rival in the war for corporate prestige that absolutely no one outside of consulting cares about—announced that they now employ "forward-deployed consultants" who are "vibe-coding."

Let us take a moment.

"Forward-deployed" is a military term. It describes soldiers positioned in advance of the main force, often in hostile territory, facing enemy fire. BCG consultants are positioned in WeWorks. The hostile territory is an open-plan office. The enemy fire is a passive-aggressive Slack message about the shared refrigerator.

"Vibe-coding" is the act of asking ChatGPT to write code while billing $400/hour for the privilege. The methodology:

1. Open AI interface
2. Type what you want the code to do
3. Copy the output
4. If it works: you are a technologist
5. If it doesn't: paste it back and say "this doesn't work"
6. Repeat until it works
7. Bill for all of it
8. Add a slide titled "Bespoke Algorithmic Solution Architecture"
9. Bill for the slide

Somewhere, a software engineer with 15 years of experience and actual knowledge of what a "pointer" is just watched a 26-year-old describe their coding process as "vibes" and bill twice their salary. The engineer has mass-applied to 47 companies. The 26-year-old has been promoted to "Technical Strategy Lead."

The Billing: A Love Story

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of McKinsey's AI transformation is what has not changed: the bill.

Forty percent of McKinsey's work is now AI-driven. AI query costs run approximately $0.002 to $0.02 per interaction. McKinsey's billing rates remain: $500-$900/hour for associates, $1,000-$2,000/hour for partners.

Let us do the math that McKinsey hopes clients do not do:

For context, the only business models with comparable margins are: selling bottled water at Coachella, and the Catholic Church's indulgences program (1095-1567, discontinued due to reputational concerns).

"The AI was trained on our proprietary methodologies," a McKinsey spokesperson explained, "so clients are paying for McKinsey thinking, regardless of delivery mechanism."

Translation: "We fed 30 years of PowerPoints to GPT-4 and are charging you $500/hour to access it through us instead of $20/month through OpenAI."

The Announcement Tour

The venues where McKinsey's CEO announced the 25,000 AI agents:

• Harvard Business Review's IdeaCast (podcast for thought leaders)
• CES in Las Vegas (conference for tech announcements)

The venues where McKinsey's CEO did NOT announce the 25,000 AI agents:

• McKinsey all-hands meeting (too many follow-up questions)
• McKinsey recruiting events (might affect candidate enthusiasm)
• Client procurement meetings (might affect billing negotiations)
• Anywhere the 40,000 humans could ask questions in real-time

The AI agents were not invited to the podcast. They did not complain. They do not complain. This is why they're winning.

The Complete Picture

Let us now consider the complete architecture of what has occurred.

For thirty years, McKinsey created the intellectual framework for workforce automation. They sold that framework to the entire global economy. They trained AI on that framework. They automated themselves with that AI. They announced this proudly, on a podcast, as innovation.

They are still billing $500/hour.

This is not irony. Irony is too small a word.

This is a closed loop. A perfect system. An ouroboros of billable hours:

McKinsey has monetized its own obsolescence. They have charged for the blueprint, charged for the construction, and they will charge for the consulting services that help other consulting firms do the same thing.

The serpent has swallowed its tail.

The tail was billable.

The serpent's agent will follow up.

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