201–210 of 269 posts
In common law jurisdictions, there's a term of art in law -- "unconscionable". It's when a contract is so egregiously one-sided that no reasonable person would agree to it, and it could be ruled unenforceable. It's not reasonable to expect an employee to build up a body of expertise in a field, and then agree to be bound never to work in that field again after leaving your current job. IANAL, but confidentiality agre…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
US finance has the same thing, and also calls it gardening leave. In our case I think it's reasonably common for it to be as long as a year. Downside for finance folks is that the usually make a decent chunk of their compensation through bonuses, not their base salary. So their gardening-leave pay ends up being quite a pay cut, and while they're "gardening", they're out of the game for a year and their skills/knowled…
> reasonably common for it to be as long as a year Absolutely not. For ibanks, less than VP is one month. VP/ED/MD is three months. Sometimes it is six months for an MD, but that is extreme. The longest that I ever heard was someone who left Citadel as a portfolio manager had a TWO year gardening leave. How can that make any financial sense for Citadel? Before the HN crowd jumps in about that Citadel example being "r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think having billionaires at all is of benefit to society? Or do you just mean that the people inclined to break rules to accumulate unreasonable wealth would just follow them instead if that worked as well and that is what would benefit society?
Because in a well organized society where wealth accumulation is not by corruption, then by definition it would be by creating value, which benefits everyone. The alternative is something like oligarchs that extract wealth because of state granted monopolies, corporatism that strangles competition with anti competitive regulation, etc. The accumulation of wealth is all out of proportion and possibly not even correlat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> reasonably common for it to be as long as a year Absolutely not. For ibanks, less than VP is one month. VP/ED/MD is three months. Sometimes it is six months for an MD, but that is extreme. The longest that I ever heard was someone who left Citadel as a portfolio manager had a TWO year gardening leave. How can that make any financial sense for Citadel? Before the HN crowd jumps in about that Citadel example being "r…
I know an example of a garden leave for 2 years for an engineer working on trading algorithms. Maybe he falls into that 1000 people category (PhD in math).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In UK it's called gardening leave. A period when you are still employed but not at work and can't join another company without agreement. Uk law generally is that non compete clause is ok, if the length of time is reasonable. But you can't stop a person with a trade from applying that trade unreasonably. Most tend to be 3-6 months. Normally it's to stop a person leaving from stealing clients.
There is a difference between non-solicitation and non-compete. In the US, the former obligation might be acceptable while the later might not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In finance, it is common to be paid your base wage during your non-compete. Or at least that is how mine worked.
Since a huge chunk of comp in finance is bonus, especially if you're a rainmaker, I don't see how this is a win.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like something ripe for being gamed. How do they protect from someone just quitting and continuing to get paid?
They're not obligated to enforce the non-compete. If you don't have any sensitive information to take to a competitor, they might not give you any garden leave. OTOH, I've seen non-competes as long as 2.5 years from places like Citadel.
> I've seen non-competes as long as 2.5 years from places like Citadel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not obligated to enforce the non-compete. If you don't have any sensitive information to take to a competitor, they might not give you any garden leave. OTOH, I've seen non-competes as long as 2.5 years from places like Citadel.
What's worse is actually those non-competes with a variable period. The company doesn't have to tell you in advance how long it will be; only when you hand in your resignation letter will they tell you. It entirely serves to make your job hunt more difficult.
In some countries that's illegal. So when presented with a contract that contains such claims, I have 2 options: 1) ask them to remove it... and so I risk not getting the job 2) don't say anything, and sign it If I'm really interested in the job, I'll go for option 2 because I know they cannot enforce such claims, so I'll be fine.
There's option 3, and that's: don't say anything, strike some passages and sign it. Whether that's a good idea, that depends on the circumstances but I'm just noting it as an option.
> strike some passages and sign it