Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank cautioned graduates of leading business schools that working in management consulting for more than two years can make them ‘tainted meat’ and leave them ‘unemployable for life.’

The wealthy investor criticized the conventional path of pursuing a consulting career post-MBA, a route often seen as highly desirable for alumni of Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, labeling it as potentially career-ending.

The Canadian businessman, who is currently teaching at Harvard Business School, expressed his efforts to dissuade his students from this financially rewarding yet demoralizing career choice.

‘Look, if you want to drift into hell on Earth, stay 24 months in a consulting firm and you are tainted meat for the rest of your life,’ O’Leary said to Fortune. 

‘No one’s going to hire you to make a decision because you never have made one.’

The remarks have sparked debate in elite academic and corporate circles, as O’Leary doubled down on his view that students choosing six-figure consulting jobs are dooming themselves to mediocrity, irrelevance – and ultimately, a lifetime working for someone else.

O’Leary’s remarks were made in his capacity as an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and come at a time when two-thirds of his MBA students reportedly raise their hands when asked if they’re headed into consulting. 

The executive and former software magnate said he has made it his mission to intervene.

‘What I try and do is disrupt a few of them in every class,’ he said. ‘If I can get four of you to abandon your drift into mediocrity, then I’ve done a great job here.’

O’Leary, who built his fortune through the $4.2 billion sale of SoftKey Software Products, now teaches a course titled The Founder Mindset. 

But instead of nurturing a generation of risk-takers, he says he’s watching a generation settle for safe salaries and predictable promotions.

‘They haven’t done anything,’ O’Leary said of junior consultants. ‘They just wrote reports. Didn’t matter.

‘I always take those résumés of consultants that want to get into the real world, and throw them in the garbage,’ he said bluntly.

O’Leary does not deny that top consulting jobs offer enviable perks: $250,000 to $350,000 starting salaries, first-class travel, and prestige among peers. But he says there can be a permanent cost to taking such a job.

‘If you’re there for more than 24 months, you get the virus,’ he warned. ‘Your résumé says you were someone of no consequence.

‘Why would anybody burn all those hours while someone else makes money, and you do nothing of consequence?’ he asked. ‘I respect all the consulting firms that are out there, but I’m going to do my best to keep people from going into that,’ O’Leary said.

‘You can go to the soccer games, go to picnics. You can do whatever, and it’s a great life,’ he said. ‘You can provide for a family. But you’ll never be free. You’ll never be financially free.’

O’Leary says freedom doesn’t come from a paycheck but from ownership and risk. 

At Harvard Consulting has long been viewed as the fast track to executive leadership.

Harvard MBAs have gone on to lead corporations, run hedge funds, and shape economic policy, but O’Leary says many are still wasting their potential and he is having to battle decades of tradition.

He also warns that the entrepreneurial path is not the easy one with long 100-hour weeks, but he insists the pain is worth the prize.

‘Entrepreneurship may mean no vacations, sharing an apartment with five roommates, and grinding for years, but once you make it, you can call your own shots’ he said.