What consulting (almost) cost me
Diego Pedulla-Smith joined consulting for the reasons many college graduates do — smart people, career capital, and a vague sense that it would open doors. What he didn't anticipate was how quickly the hours would crowd out the thing that mattered most to him: making music.
Today, as a member of the program team at Innovate Animal Ag, a think tank that finds concrete ways to improve animal health and wellbeing through technology, Diego channels the analytical rigor of his BCG years into work he truly believes in. We spoke with him about the personal cost of working until 10 PM on weekdays, the strategic advantage of cheap rent, and what actually helped him find work that offers both positive impact and intellectual adventure.
Take me back to a specific night at BCG. What was going through your head?
It's nine o'clock at night, you're working on a slide deck, you're exhausted, and you're trying to figure out how to squeeze in time with the friends that matter most before Monday rolls around again. For most of my work, the level of intellectual depth wasn't very high. It was much more about doing an adequate job very fast and consistently. The reality of working consulting hours was that I just didn't have the energy or the time for other things that mattered. For me personally, there was an urgent sense of something missing.
Let’s rewind the clock. Did Baby Diego dream of consulting?
No. Baby Diego was too busy thinking about Pokémon! However, by freshman year of college, I was dreaming of consulting. The lifestyle felt enticing: dressing up, traveling, meeting with important clients, going to elegant dinners, working hard, doing analytics. Interesting, engaging, intellectual work. I joined a consulting club and liked the people. I worked hard prepping for the interviews and was very happy to get the offer from BCG, the firm I wanted most.
Beyond the lifestyle, I was also thinking about my career from a societal impact perspective. A couple of years at a reputable consulting firm could provide me with the career capital I needed to make a more positive impact in the world.
What was the plan? Were you thinking, “Okay, I'm going to join BCG for two years and then cure malaria afterwards?”
Longer term, I knew I wanted to do something good with my life, but I didn’t know what. I cared about global health and reducing risks from advanced AI, but hadn’t thought through an exit path.
It sounds like once you started, you got a reality check.
As soon as my first project began, I thought, oh, maybe I actually don't like consulting. I hadn't really considered the implications of a job where the expectation is working until 10 p.m. on weekdays. If it had just been long hours, it would have been tough, but the bigger issue was that I didn’t find the work intrinsically meaningful.
Was it something like, “This type of consulting eats your time, so you can't find meaning outside of work, but it's not quite meaningful enough to give you meaning inside it?”
That's certainly how I felt. I could see the path stretching forward. If I stayed in this world, I'd have a lifestyle like the managers and partners, constantly working, doing good work by their own standards, but with no time for anything else. It felt like a very bland thing to devote most of your time to. And I noticed everyone I worked with said, "This is so bad, I'm definitely leaving soon," and then stayed much longer than they intended.
You also write and produce music. Can you talk about what music meant to you while you were in consulting?
It felt existential. I wanted to make truly great songs, and I didn't have the skills. I didn't have the time to get better or even just to try. It felt like I was going to pass through this period of my life without accomplishing the thing that felt most important to me.
Many consultants who reach out to us are in a similar situation and feel stuck. Did you have any clues at the time about how you would find your way to work you fully believed in?
There were two stages: leaving consulting, and then getting a new job. In between, I had to satisfy the music urge and get it to a more manageable level of non-existential angst.
I joined BCG in January 2023 and left in February 2024. Pretty close to as soon as I could without repaying my starting bonus. For that first year after leaving, I treated getting better at music as a full-time job. I identified the skills I needed to improve, studied my favorite songs for what they were doing that I couldn't, and every day broke it down into pieces and tackled some of them. I also started working one-on-one with a music mentor. I'd highly recommend hiring coaches for skills you want to develop. I subsidized this with savings from consulting.
You saved some of your consulting salary?
Saving was critical. It gave me a runway. The more I'd saved, the more freedom I had to find a job I'd actually like rather than accepting anything. I intentionally avoided lifestyle inflation. A lot of my peers in consulting were living downtown in Chicago, the most expensive part of the city, but I paid significantly less for a place I liked better. Don't live in the city center!
Moving forward, I knew money mattered less to me than to my peers, and I wanted jobs where I could get arbitrage from that. I was willing to sacrifice some compensation but still get the other things typically associated with high-paying jobs, like intellectual engagement and inspiring peers.
What was the biggest obstacle between you and higher-impact work at the time?
The hardest thing was imagining a job I could get excited about. My dream job during that time would have been something as unobtrusive as possible. “Just get out of my way so I can work on music.” Even during the job search, my standards weren't high enough. Because I didn't believe I could find something I'd be excited about, I was willing to accept bad fits.
After about a year, I felt a lot better, and I'd integrated music into my life more. Once that pressure lifted, I started wanting to work again.
What story were you telling yourself about your career?
At that point, I wanted a job that wasn't a crazy time burden and where I was working with smart people. Those two felt in opposition. Competent people who care about their work tend to be correlated with jobs that demand a lot of time. And a lot of the direct consulting transitions were into things with the same intensity, like private equity, so I found it hard to leverage my consulting background for the non-pipeline jobs I actually wanted.
Do you feel like the transitions consulting was setting you up for weren't the ones you wanted?
Definitely.
Which resources actually helped?
Consultants for Impact was the most helpful thing in my entire job search. People emailed me because my name was on the list. The CEO of Innovate Animal Ag emailed me because of it. A lot of jobs at organizations you all partner with tend to be genuinely interesting, with highly motivated people, but less of a culture of grinding for its own sake.
Compared to the topics you were thinking about earlier – global health, AI governance – Innovate Animal Ag has a different focus. Why did you choose it?
I was very impressed with Innovate Animal Ag as an organization. I found their theory of change compelling: that new technology lets us make progress by reducing the number of tradeoffs we need to make. And I was personally impressed by the people working there. They seemed very competent and I thought I could learn a lot from them.
We’re also impressed with Innovate Animal Ag’s impact so far. How do you, personally, find the difference between an effective organization and one that has good branding but doesn’t get much done?
Consulting gives you some ability to recognize what competence looks like. I found that Innovate Animal Ag’s CEO has a separate Substack, The Optimist’s Barn, where he shares how he thinks through problems. I saw real clarity of thought, which felt like a strong green flag for how the organization operated internally. But it's hard. It's genuinely hard to know.
It is hard! Prioritizing where to work takes a lot of careful attention. Looking back, what would you urge other consultants to consider?
Ten years from now, what do you actually want your life to look like, both day-to-day and whether it reflects the type of person you want to be? There's an axiom that really resonates with me: you are what you do. You can believe you have certain values, but if they don't get manifested in your actions and how you spend your time, they're not really part of your identity. To consultants, I would ask, are you pursuing a career that gives you validation but doesn't get you closer to the life you actually want? Are you climbing the wrong ladder?
“Dear consultants: don't climb the wrong ladder.”
We can say that!
Editor’s note: Diego’s music, under the artist name “deeg,” is available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. We’re fans, especially of his new single, “Burnout.”
