New York may ban noncompete employment agreements and Wall Street is not happy • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by willcipriano » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 1:54 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #117

felipelemos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My email is not your confidential data. My phone number is not your confidential data. If your company can only exist by blocking other companies from competition with your customer, then your company should not exist in first place.

We’re talking about an insider who has insider knowledge about accounts and maybe also a personal relationship that they were paid to develop with a client. Also, it’s a 100% fact that companies consider client rosters confidential. It’s fun to say no one can claim my name or phone number as confidential data… but that’s not how things work.

I claim my browsing history is confidential, the only difference is I don't have the government enforcing my wishes. On a moral level "stealing" one is the same as the other.

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

#132

Post by FFP999 » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #34

cj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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? Yes. It's called free market competition and it's great for the society and economy. NYC bankers should be first in line to understand that.

They want a free market _for everyone else_. What's the point of being rich and well connected if you can't socialize your losses and keep your profits?

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

#133

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

xvector wrote: post #79

vgatherps wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most tech work is not particularly novel at a technical level. Very few services have any sort of massive advantage in the technical IP. Some of them might have advantage in customer/data analytics, but most advantage is in the idea itself as well as being gaining the market and brand. Another firm can't just go "Ah, today we'll knock out X new app and take 50% of the market" This is not true in trading. If I go take…

Why is that the employee's problem? Pay the employee well and they will stick around.

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #68

infecto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General strategies of trading on financial markets. Entirely different than working at Google.

And what benefit does the economy and society get by allowing monopolization of these strategies by a single company at the expense of basic right for workers to switch jobs to the ones that pay them the most? It sounds so profoundly anti-capitalist - if the knowledge of certain strategy is so important, the employee should be retained by paying them more and giving them better perks instead of enforced labor contrac…

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by sophacles » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

neilwilson wrote: post #18

eru wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment in eg the US is fairly low. So you can pick companies which have less stringent non-competes (or non at all).

Jobs on offer are fewer than number of unemployed. Therefore jobs are scarce. Only when there is a vast surplus of jobs will competition do the work. Until then you need regulation.

And regulators that dont cite "low unemployment" when they raise interest rates.

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

#136

Post by wslh » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #124

bradleyjg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem in the tech industry but not on Wall Street. The norm there is paid time off between jobs (“gardening leave”). Everyone knows it is part of the system and that a mid level or senior hire can’t start right away. They also buy out still vesting bonuses and the like. It’s quite a civilized system and I think the law ought to leave it alone, while addressing abusive ones like we have in tech.

When this legislation was originally introduced, an Albany area Jimmy Johns franchisee got attention for suing former minimum wage employees who took the secrets of sandwich assembly to a nearby Subway and local deli. Timing was poor - during the budget season when the entire legislature was in town. The notion that a sandwich stop should be allowed to restrict the future employment is absurd on its face. Yet there a…

> When I was an employee of the government, ethics laws limited my ability to leave and sell my services to the government in various ways. There are similar scenarios in other industries.

I think this is more about corruption control than non-compete.

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

#137

Post by lordnacho » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #113

lordnacho wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an invented crime, meant to protect the incumbents. If I'm a waiter in a restaurant there should be nothing to stop me telling the customers that I'm going to a better restaurant and they should come and try it. Will the boss be annoyed? Yes. Should he be allowed to stop me? No. In the real world there is no salesman who thinks of the clients as belonging to the company. They all know that sales relationships…

FWIW, I agree with the scenarios and examples using workers making minimum wage. Waitresses, etc. On HN we’re talking about tech employees who make 5-10x the median US salary. We can have stricter rules and stricter contracts for the 5% top paid employees. Obviously a waitress shouldn’t be sued for talking about another restaurant with a customer.

Making 5-10x because they are forced into arrangements that deprive them of 10-15x.

If a waitress shouldn't be sued, why should a dev or a PM? We should all be equal under the law, there shouldn't be a "oh well you make enough money" clause. If anything, freeing high-productivity workers is the bigger win for society, far outweighing the benefit from better restaurants.

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

#138

Post by silverlake » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #101

GuB-42 wrote: post #78

The article doesn't address what I think is the most important aspect of noncompete agreements: compensation. In France, and I believe in many other places as well, you can't have a noncompete without proper compensation. Compensation is relative to how it will affect the former employee career, it is usually less than a full wage, but it can be that if it makes finding a new job particularly difficult. There have be…

This is a problem in the tech industry but not on Wall Street. The norm there is paid time off between jobs (“gardening leave”). Everyone knows it is part of the system and that a mid level or senior hire can’t start right away. They also buy out still vesting bonuses and the like. It’s quite a civilized system and I think the law ought to leave it alone, while addressing abusive ones like we have in tech.

Garden leave means you get your low base salary but not any bonus, which is the bulk of a finance income.

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

#139

Post by mhh__ » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

vgatherps wrote: post #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 tw…

It's hard to forget how this stuff works though. It's just theatre.

You obviously shouldn't be able to walk off with a model but especially with hindsight I could bang out some models I've worked on very quickly as long as the infrastructure was amenable

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

#140

Post by burnerburnson » Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 2:28 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #68

infecto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General strategies of trading on financial markets. Entirely different than working at Google.

And what benefit does the economy and society get by allowing monopolization of these strategies by a single company at the expense of basic right for workers to switch jobs to the ones that pay them the most? It sounds so profoundly anti-capitalist - if the knowledge of certain strategy is so important, the employee should be retained by paying them more and giving them better perks instead of enforced labor contrac…

The benefit to society is the same as patents or copyright. Companies will be more likely to invest in developing new technology if they are confident their competitors won't be able to use the result.