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

fortune.com

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

#241

Post by ghaff »

ndriscoll wrote: post #219
potatolicious wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY, WA, other tech hubs in the US that aren’t California. That said garden leave is not all sunshine and roses like OP describes. It’s common on Wall Street but a huge part of your normal compensation is performance bonuses - and typically garden leaves only cover base salary. A typical garden leave doesn’t come close to full income replacement for the period. But it’s better than nothing - which is the status quo in…

At least in software, my base salary is ~2/3 my comp right now (ignoring stock growth). If I could take say 50% base (so ~33% total) to quit working for 6 months - 1 year, you bet I'd take that deal. Put me on garden leave for as long as you want.

How many people do you think are in a position to comfortably, even happily, take a 70% pay cut?

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

#242

Post by ajb »

ghaff wrote: post #233
ajb wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you reduce the cost of something by a large factor, it is often gamechanging. I think that being able to move a whole team openly could reduce the cost to the new employer by a factor of three or more, which would be a significant change in the employment market, and change employer behavior. Here is how I see it working out: Lets say that Foosoft is a rapidly expanding unicorn, and Microgle is a cash cow which…

I don't think I've ever been in a circumstance where I would have had any interest in moving to another company with an entire team. I admittedly haven't moved jobs a lot but I don't really imagine it's especially common that everyone on a team would be ready to jump ship and come to terms doing the same type of job with a new employer, likely in a different location. I'm sure it happens but I can't believe it's the…

Fair enough. I doubt it would become the norm, but I could see it being common among failing companies.

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

#243

Post by thsksbd »

lovich wrote: post #154
thsksbd wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a terrible system. If we assume that the financial sector is good for society, then a productive element of it is idling causing inefficiencies leading to higher fees. If the assumption is incorrect, then the financial sector is not a productive part of the economy. In this case the worker's vacation is irrelevant since it's just a manifestation of the parasitical nature of it. Either way normal people are paying…

Do you believe that buffers are a terrible system? Do you think that any significant piece of software could run without a buffer? If the answer is no, then you should reconsider thinking that garden leave is bad. It’s essentially a buffer that covers the switching cost for agents needing to decide which principal they work for. If you removed garden leave you’d have a higher up front cost for rational actors who nee…

Non-compete + garden leave = important resources siphoned off the economy [1]

Remove non-competes, then there's no need for garden leave.

If an industry insists it needs non-competes, the dept. of labor could issue exceptions with strong penalties (x3 wages (incld. expected bonuses) for the duration of the non/ -compete, etc)

[1] an argument could be made that the more workers are put on garden leave the better it is for the economy, vis a vis less folks doing damage. Overall, I think the whole fintech industry is a waste of STEM talent. Those physics PhDs could be something beneficial instead, like being a magician at three year old birthday parties.

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

#244

Post by [deleted] »

donatj wrote: post #155

Sometimes I feel like corporations do things just because their lawyers are cargo culting and adding clauses because everyone else does rather than some logical reason. My sister worked at Subway and had to sign a noncompete that she wouldn’t work at another sandwich shop for three years. Are they really afraid she’s going to steal their secrets of placing meat on bread? The more cynical will certainly assume malice,…

[deleted]

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

#245

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#246

Post by qwerty456127 »

Drakim wrote: post #173
qwerty456127 wrote: post #17

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.

In what universe is it a good compromise that fast food workers aren't allowed to work at another fast food restaurant for 6 months after they quit, without any compensation? It incentivize companies to add it to their contract just because it makes it harder for employees to quit bad working conditions and low pays since they might not land a new job and be able to pay rent. It doesn't protect any sort of intellectu…

Well, it didn't even come to my mind that a fast food worker might have a noncompete agreement. I thought this only is about engineers, scientists, managers etc - people who actually have knowledge which is reasonable to prevent from leaking to a competing company too quickly. Applied to a fast-food worker any noncompete agreement sounds really wild. Do fast-food companies actually require this? Sounds crazy.

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

#247

Post by [deleted] »

ajb wrote: 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.

[deleted]

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

#250

Post by stillwithit »

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…

If it’s rooted in math none of the IP should be protected. The training and definition of axioms and viable algorithms should be an open human endeavor.

Letting capitalism dictate what math is public and private is pretty fucking draconian

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