The "please take notes" associate
anyone else have an associate like this? no matter how insignificant the call they demand you take notes, despite the fact that those notes are never asked for by anybody. 95% of the time you have no clue what's going on / what's being discussed so you end up just writing verbatim what everyone is saying and the notes make no sense. What a waste of analyst resources
To any associates out there - why the fuck do you ask us to do this. We don't learn anything by writing down words without a full understanding / context of the situation
the worst is when you find out they've also been taking notes. Like dude, why did you waste 2 people's time instead of one
“Hey sorry, I wasn’t taking notes. What are the follow ups?”
Precisely. Most of the time your associate may be taking notes but you need to take notes for the times when the associate gets pulled onto another call or couldn't take notes for some other reason. Also, not knowing what's going on during the call is definitely a you problem. If my summer interns and first-year analysts can effectively summarize the calls they were on afterwards, you definitely can develop an understanding of what's going on during the call.
Yeah lmao, it’s extremely important to listen in. Haha people these days. What do they expect? Get paid $100k salary to pick their ass during a cal@v
“Most of the time your associate may be taking notes but you need to take notes for the times when the associate gets pulled onto another call or couldn't take notes for some other reason.”
i am totally fine with this. Read the post above. My complaint is about double note taking or taking notes on meaningless internal calls
also dude, An analyst is not going to be able to fully understand every call they’re on. I’m on 7+ deals, 4 of them live. There is literally not enough time in the day for me to have a high level grasp of all the deals I’m on between pulling together useless decks and modeling
Bruh analysts complaining about doing the most basic tasks now? Believe it or not, as the person on the bottom of the rung in the office, it's your job to do things like this to help support the other members, such as giving the VP the flexibility to jump onto another client call during the meeting or the associate the ability to tune out a bit to check a model for another staffing without missing out on the important content of the meeting.
Also, something I've always done was just pro-actively email call notes after the call to all junior members of the deal team (VP and lower) after each call.
Literally lol this is a big part of the job and I’m always pumped up when someone asks me to get some notes, shows you provide somewhat of value lol. This has gotta be a troll.
“I’m always pumped when someone asks me to take notes”
i am begging you to get laid bro
lmao Associates in the thread are so mad
I have never once complained about all note taking. I’m talking specifically of notes on meaningless internal calls, or instances where the associate is also taking notes. That is a pure undebatable waste of time
you picked a retard job in what sounds like a low tier firm/team and now you are unsurprisingly being treated like a retard
What if there are some to-dos for internal calls ?
What if the Associate need to answer to emails during the call and can’t keep every detail ?
if you can’t even manage note taking, good luck to your associates/VPs
your assoc (and possibly your VP) didn't create the meaningless work.
there's zero incentive for them to do that because it just means more work to review.
a meaningless internal call might be BS but maybe you need to get sign off from a self-important SVP / MD on the line.
if you don't like it, then you don't like the job, which is fine, most people don't. Feel free to leave for a more entrepreneurial place which admittedly scraps this BS but probably gives you even less job security.
as an analyst I once missed out someone's 5 minutes of fame during a 1 hr team meeting and he threw a bitch fit when the notes were circulated. so just do it.
Not OP - But my thing was never that note taking was a bad task, in fact I always did it for myself so I knew what was going on. the problem was the fact that one specific associate would always check in and ask us to take notes. You don't need to remind 2nd years to takes notes on every call you have with them. It was the constant babying of analyst that always annoyed me.
You’ll be surprised of what some analysts can pull off - you often need to babysit
Imagine being the “I need to be told to take notes” analyst. Literally take notes on every call whether you’re asked to or not.
Dorky lol
if I’m running with the model, on 6 other accounts that require my attention, and have a ton of people bugging me to get shit out, I’m not carving out time to take notes. You’re going to have to ask me because 1 hour of notes instead of work means me going to bed at 3 am vs 2 am
Nah that’s completely different. That’s when you tell your associate “Hey, I’m cranking on a few other accounts - can you take notes on this one?”
Looks like we need another round of junior layoffs
Looks like u need to get laid
Notes don't matter at all until they do. Always take notes.
Kinda nerdy statement lmao
Disagree with some of these comments. There should be a balance, probably only 60% of calls need note taking. The rest are probably internal BS shit that nobody cares about. Be prepared to verbally tell what happened though.
100% agree. Associates in the thread not understanding because they ask their analysts to do this shit all the time
key point that I bet you the vast majority of complaining people here can't do. And that's why they keep getting reminded to take notes
Let's take a step back from taking notes as a task/service for associate or VP...you should be taking them for your own benefit. Like, sitting on a model call, even if it's the associate or CFO asking questions, you the analyst are gonna be running with the model. Literally it benefits only you when the VP inevitably asks "How are we treating X" and you know because you wrote it down. You don't know what's going on because you don't take notes. Don't get me wrong - Associates should be jotting things down as well and not treating you as stenographer - ask if we need detailed notes or just take aways.
I think you're getting the responses you're getting from VPs/Associates because we all work with analysts who constantly have to be reminded to take notes on follow-ups and then can never actually be given responsibility because they don't know what's going on. If this is you, you're probably looked at as a liability on the team.
lmao kid’s getting roasted
Sounds like a useless first-year analyst who thinks he’s a big shot
Nope second year on his way out reflecting on the subnormality of the industry
well gluck because unless you're exiting the industry or going to the HF side (no clue what that life is), PE is banking 2.0.
if you think Ibankers are paranoid you haven't seen PE folks
Bro the point is not to write verbatim. Distill the main point of each part of the discussion. You should be able to do other work like emails while listening in to these calls. Add a quick action items section and clean up your notes for 10 minutes before circulating after calls. As the analyst if anyone knows the action items it should be you. This is a classic analyst task what did you expect to be doing?
Wait until you have me, the can you send me the notes no one asked you to take associate
Being a hardo to someone less than 2 years out of undergrad is pretty badass and totally not an inferiority complex
Note-taking - (1) record call, (2) speech to text recognition, (3) extract transcript, (4) clean up text, formatting for submission, (5) send Notes + audio of call (if appropriate/safe to do so—otherwise can send audio to colleagues iPhone casually off the record, if he/she requests.
NOTE TAKING - WORKING HARDER, NOT SMARTER (SOLUTION - USE TECH)
Note taking reduces flexibility of Analysts schedule, to pursue a labor-intensive, low cognitively challenging task, that can be done alternatively, and further ENHANCED beyond just text by:
1) record the call - in some way (go to open Conference/Meeting room, dial-in to call, put call on speakerphone, record call, leave - come back at end to end recording leave
Happy to show folks how to do speech to text recognition and even do it for them quick if they DM/email me and send me the audio. It’s not perfect but there’s a few different platforms you can do this on. I have subscriptions to Descript and Adobe Premiere Pro to do so
Fathom - check this company out
Fathom - “Never take notes during a Zoom call again”.
https://fathom.video/
https://twitter.com/fathomdotvideo?s=21&t=-WK2FuEEH4w6aZQb2taTgQ
Looks promising, and free
A couple reviews say:
I don't know how this is free but I absolutely love it. The AI summary is what I've been looking for. I no longer have to take notes OR press any buttons. It's all done for me and summarized perfectly, even when talking about very niche topics.
Alternatives
Have fewer, more focused live meetings. Highlight and share relevant meeting moments on the fly. Keep your team always in the loop.
Fellow is the first app of its kind built for managers and their teams to power 1-on-1s, group conversations, feedback, and priorities.
Record, transcribe and search your calls in one central place. Fireflies lets you search all your past convos and create action items in seconds. Easiest meeting minutes, ever.
Bookmark important moments of your Zoom calls in real-time and easily turn long recordings into bite-sized video clips. Free while in Beta. Works with licensed (paid) Zoom accounts only.
Absolutely based, now watch associates cope & seethe
probably free because it takes the content of those calls / transcripts and feeds them into some trading programme to profit from insider knowledge.
jks.
or who knows?
how do these apps / software deal with people who have heavy accents? no issues?
Honestly, someone is usually asking for my notes so I need to you take notes to incorporate into my notes. The notes are not for you or my benefit their for the MD on the plane’s.
I think an issue is most times there’s a lot of convos happening juniors don’t see so a lot of things seem useless. Maybe a good quality of an associate / VP is to explain what this is all for but sometimes there isn’t enough time.
Why not just have a convo with your associate about it if it's bugging you so much? Unless their assholes they should be receptive to explaining their thought process.
What about something g like Livescribe pen? Records and take notes. Then at least you don’t have to write like a maniac
They're just notes, jesus. Y'all are so soft.
You have to write things down verbatim because you don't know anything yet. But the real value of your note-taking will come when you are able to summarize key takeaways for the rest of your team.
I am an analyst. So basically you’re bitching that your associate has to remind you to write notes on new tasks right? Do you know every single detail this job entails? Unless you’re a managing director you who doesn’t touch any of the models you shouldn’t be even thinking about not taking notes. You should thank your associate for being so caring of your professional success.
Imagine how cushy this guy's life was prior to having to work for a living. I can't imagine complaining about being asked to take notes. This is so bad that I almost regret responding because it comes off as a troll post.
If you’re not smart to enough to know what’s going on (or socially clueless enough to find out) and have to write everything verbatim, your only use to the world is taking notes. Be glad someone is giving you something to do, because there’s obviously nothing else you can do.
The “why do I have to work” analyst
Is this a joke? You're not supposed to write things down verbatim - just jot down key points, follow ups / action items, etc. Between this and the post about the analyst who doesn't want to own the model, smh...
covid kids are different frfr no cap
Agreed with the other posts that taking notes at the very minimum allows you to understand what’s going on (ex: what changes are needed for CIM or model?), so you can run with things. The less hand holding over time you can have, the better you look to your bosses.
I think OP is more annoyed that he’s a senior analyst and still getting treated as an intern being reminded to take notes though (vs being asked to take notes). I agree it’s frustrating but gotta understand from Associate’s perspective. It’s mostly (as with most things in banking and PE) CYA so if MD asks for notes they are readily available. And if you don’t have notes, then MD will blame associate, who will then blame you. So it’s more so a problem inherent in IB / PE than this specific Associate IMO.
Is it a waste of time yes. Just like most things in banking but atleast there is technology to solve this one… cmon brah
not sure why you're getting so much monkey shit. I actually agree. vast majority of the call time is usually just empty talk. like people will discuss weather and what they did over the weekend for 10-15 min. then we finally talk business, everybody will talk their way out of answering questions directly so they can't be held accountable for anything. so there are usually really like 3-5 sentences or actual actionable items from a 1hr call. and I'll write it down if it's something I need to work on. but some managers will expect to see like 2-3 pages of notes.
people really exaggerate their own importance and importance of these calls. they are really not worth taking notes of, most of the time.
and managers who ask for notes are usually the most scared pussy betas. normal managers will just listen to the call and write down actionable items. if they forget something, they'll just shoot a message/email and ask to confirm/clarify.
I had a manager who recorded calls and then rewatched them multiple times. like how pathetic are some people. even money and prestige can't change you from being a pussy.
you're either not on a good team or you're not on high quality deals.
you learn alot from watching how a good senior fields questions / corners a 3rd party into agreeing to stuff / shifts blame away from their team, etc.
all these "talk their way out" interactions that you're calling a waste of time are actually masterclasses in office politics. If you don't understand, you're going to be a scapegoat eventually and not even realise.
Body language and choice of words are more informative than you realise. Despite there being many assholes in our industry, most people aren't complete sociopaths and will feel bad about outright lying. They'll dodge and dance around it, but you'll still get information that way. If you're sharp, you can pick up on what people plan to do before they actually do it, just by being able to observe that.
I understand it all, and I know that people see it as an art of negotiation, but for me personally it just makes me disgusted. I would rather be a scapegoat than behave like a snake and play office politics. You can make good money without acting this way. Yeah, maybe you can make a bit more money by being a coward, eating people's asses, and playing office politics, but is it worth it?
Calm your tits. Taking notes consumes as much brainpower as scrolling through TikTok
100% agree with you OP. Those "associates" you're talking about usually schmoozed their way into that role (ie his or her family member is friend of a friend of a friend of the brother of the CEO, and multiple favors were flipped to get him/her the role). It's likely that the associate offers no value to the team, and I would go as far as saying overall team culture might be complete dogshit if employees perform at this level still after a 2-3 year analyst program.
Anybody who has actually worked in ANY high finance role INSIDE an actual investment bank for 3 months or longer understands that the industry is a joke lol. There is so much bullshit ass-kissing and unnecessary circle-jerking that these assholes get away with—because there aren't shareholders to satisfy—it actually makes me laugh. The problem really resides in cliché losers who never got the girls in college, then don a suit and interview for some fancy LinkedIn logos and an entry level salary, despite working for a "private partnership".
Sorry you had to go through that OP, there are plenty of companies out there with better culture (and truthfully pay 100k).
Must be a troll post.
Surely nobody can be this unaware or plain stupid?
You should be taking notes anyway, without being asked, as it's then a useful reference if someone asks you what happened on a call two weeks ago.
The very fact you have multiple staffings reinforces the need to taker notes to make sure nothing is forgotten.
On a side note - Teams integrating ChatGPT to take notes for a meeting that can then be searched is truly an exciting prospect.
Notes are a waste of time. People should be able to scribble down a few follow ups on a note pad and discuss after call on next steps.
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