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Noncompetes are very common in finance because employees will gain access to proprietary knowledge (trading algorithms, signals, clients, strategies) that by de
by smallnamespace 9y ago
Noncompetes are very common in finance because employees will gain access to proprietary knowledge (trading algorithms, signals, clients, strategies) that by definition have very high short-term (months to a year) value to a competitor.
Confidentiality doesn't work that well because proving that a former employee disclosed proprietary information is very difficult.
However, the ex-employee is generally paid at full salary for the time that they're unemployed, which seems like a very fair arrangement all around.
- Spooky23 9y agoUsually when they really give a shit about the non-compete in finance, there's a term contract. My friend did commercial banking. He had a one year non-compete, but it was geographically scoped, and he also had multi-year contracts that protected him from layoff. They needed to release him for specific causes, buy out the contract, release his contractual obligations, or some combo.
- smallnamespace 9y agoAnother model I've seen is that everyone gets a blanket noncompete, but when the employee leaves, the business and legal folks get together and decide whether they really want to pay for the person to be unemployed. Usually it depends on the exact new position, whether it's at a direct competitor, how senior the person was, etc.