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

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311–320 of 407 posts

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

#311
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like the correct and fair implementation of non-competes broadly. If companies want leavers out of the market, they should be required to pay garden leave. People have to make a living, and it’s unreasonable to expect them to change geographies and/or professions to do so.

Firms have always payed garden leave tho

yeah but it used mixed.

E.g. I had 3m garden leave (paid, no bonus) and 3m non-compete (unpaid).

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Cry me a river. If knowledge of some particular employees worth so much to the quant firms, then they should pay them not to leave accordingly.

Knowledge of a secret does not imply that you provide value.

"Secret" should be covered by NDA and/or patented.

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

#313
post #307
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quant firms have already adapted years ago. Now they don't have 6-24m non-competes anymore, but 6-24m notice periods. You're paid full salary (incl bonus) but you don't work ("gardening leave") and obviously can't work for a competitor (because you can have a non-compete while you're employed).

Gardening leave leaves (pun intended :)) the possibility for the employee to leave with highly valuable acquired knowledge (trading strategies, algorightms, etc...) for a much higher salary and bonus than the gardening leave provides. Or maybe I am mis-understanding how gardening leave works? Thanks!

"Gardening leave" just means that during your notice period (or part of your notice period), you're not "working" in the sense of going to the office, but instead you're home ("tending your garden"). The idea is that during that time, you're not gaining new knowledge / IP, so by the time you actually start working your knowledge is several months out of date.

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

#314

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 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.

Maybe it should not be IP sensitive. It would be the interest of public to bring more competition to the quant landscape and make their profit margins lower through the competition.

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

#315
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But bonus depends on how the team did plus individual perf... politics. How do you establish what the person would have gotten paid?

That's why he suggested "average of preceding years". Maybe you allow companies to appeal to reduce the amount based on a decline in profits leading to reduced bonuses for employees on identical schemes, but... Meh. If they want to use non-compete clauses I think they should bear that risk. It will make companies think hard about on whom they should impose them, which in my opinion is the point of creating restrictio…

Right. They can always release them from the noncompete if they find it onerous.

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Cry me a river. If knowledge of some particular employees worth so much to the quant firms, then they should pay them not to leave accordingly.

…sorry, how much exactly do you think quants make?

Mid 6 to low 7 figs usually. They are usually one "tier" above SWEs i.e. an average new quant would make the same amount as an average mid-level NYC software engineer, in absolute monetary terms of total compensation. The high end firms like Jane Street and Two Sigma pay the equivalent, scaled to FAANG levels. Overall performance of the firm is a key factor in the compensation too.

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

#318
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The argument against this is that a company spends millions of dollars in research to learn something valuable, and anyone who didn't spend that money can trivially outbid for the employee that knows the results, since they can pay the employee some significant portion of the cost of the research that they didn't have to do and still come out ahead. I'm not sure I entirely buy this, but it's a lot more nuanced than "…

Then maybe the conclusion is don't spend millions to research that type of thing.

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

#319

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…

Importantly, even if noncompetes aren't enforced, trade secrets can still be grounds for litigation against a former employee. They can't just go from one employer to another and take all the secret sauce recipes with them.

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

#320

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…

> 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. Cry me a river. If knowledge of some particular employees worth so much to the quant firms, then they should pay them not to leave accordingly.

Employees don't hold ownership of that intellectual property, though. You're speaking almost in terms of a moral right; IP rights are legal rights of convention. An employee isn't entitled to them in the same way.
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