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New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

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Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#21
post #7
post #5

> New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy I though capitalism (Wall Street) was about competition. /s

It's about voluntary contracts, too.

Agreements between parties of vastly unequal power and alternatives are not voluntary.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#22
post #3

> Wall Street isn't happy that employees will have more freedom in their choice of employer "In other news, water continues to be wet."

Wall street should be half happy half sad. It is a wall street company poaching off another wall street company.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#23

New Yorks leads the pack as usual. If you want to understand why continental European salaries are mostly low , don’t only look at the social security cost, but also at the labor law which is a middle aged indentured servitude heritage wrapped with worker rights bullshit : in France, 3 months notice period, up to 8 month of trial period, non competes with ridiculous comp. are very common for startups and Mid Sized bu…

Does French law mandate trial periods or 3 month notice periods? You can usually negotiate those away. Reference checks or trial period but you should really not require both, that's an employer problem.

Europe pays lower than the US but pays better than other regions. There are many countries with low pay and poor labor rights. We should try to have high pay and better labor rights.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#24

I've heard about a good compromise option existing in a country in Europe: noncompete agreements are not banned completely but are limited to last just half a year after the employee leaves the company. It can also last much longer in case the employer agrees to keep paying half the salary to the former employee.

Don't know about that but a compromise option always exists when the two parties are willing to compromise. E.g. in our country noncompetes are outlawed but if your company is willing to pay for your gardening leave for a year, then you might be willing not to compete with them for that time. Happened to my boss (at 100% salary).

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#25
What’s a New York noncompete look like? In australia as far as I can tell it discusses associated entities - I can’t go and work for my employers major client directly if I was involved with that client during my tenure, but if I’ve had no association, I think I can. There’s also caveats around ‘right to earn a living’ if your skillset or specialty limits you to people associated with your employer, but as far as I can tell you can go and work for a competing company to your former employer, assuming the competitor was not your employers client.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#26
Quant firms at least are one of the few places where noncompetes can make sense. It's an extremely IP sensitive industry with stupendously high pay where the employee is going to someone probably competing very directly with you, for the same/similar opportunities. Actual code + NDAs banning literal reimplementations of stuff aren't that valuable, the knowledge and ideas will stay in the head of the employees.

The two main issues I have with them are that firms tend to give them to just about everybody (instead of just to folks working very directly with real IP), and they only pay base salary, not something closer to actual total compensation (often multiples of the base pay).

Having said that, the quant firm is relatively unimportant and not a good reason to prevent a total noncompete law. It's probably better to just ban them then try and make allowances that aren't full of loopholes.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#29
post #9

After noncompetes, they should go after non-solicitation. Entire teams that work well together should be able to defect from shitty employers. It kind of happens anyway but on the quiet, inefficiently - I'd love to see a job website where you can list an entire team.

Non-solicits also include not soliciting customers.

Which is particularly relevant at consultancies where the product is a service.

If you join a consultancy group, and 2 months later quit with the client roster... is it really OK to poach all their clients to start your own consultancy?

All of these contracts are time limited, FWIW. E.g. non-solicitation doesn't mean you can never work your your colleagues again. It protects against someone leaving and then immediately poaching all employees within 12 months. After 12 months you're welcome to poach as much as you'd like.

Edit: Furthermore, non-solicits don't ban your colleagues from quitting with you, as long as you're not directly asking them to quit. If they make the decision independently without being lobbied by a former employee, it's not in violation of non-solicit.

Re: New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy

#30

Quant firms at least are one of the few places where noncompetes can make sense. It's an extremely IP sensitive industry with stupendously high pay where the employee is going to someone probably competing very directly with you, for the same/similar opportunities. Actual code + NDAs banning literal reimplementations of stuff aren't that valuable, the knowledge and ideas will stay in the head of the employees. The tw…

Why does it make sense. Pay employees for their work and they’ll stick around.
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