7 ms·
> 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
by caskstrength 3y ago
> 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.
- vinceguidry 3y agoTo play devil's advocate here, this law would literally make that illegal. What keeps me from taking the money then leaving anyway? A signed contract is the only way, and banning non-competes means making that contract unenforceable.
- sesuximo 3y agoPeople sometimes leave and take less money. Plenty of other reasons to change jobs.
- helicalmix 3y ago…sorry, how much exactly do you think quants make?
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoMid 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.
- hamandcheese 3y agoKnowledge of a secret does not imply that you provide value.
- bobthepanda 3y agoclearly there's value in the secret if you're making them sign a noncompete. The proposal is just to ask firms to put money where their mouths are.
- tester756 3y agoHe says that just because someone knows a secret, then it doesnt mean that he brings value/$$$ to the company They should pay him 500k just because he knows a secret? even if he's making just 50k to the company?
- Clubber 3y agoThey should pay him whatever he would make going somewhere else. Expecting someone to not work in their career field for 1-5 years and not get compensated for that is silly.
- standardUser 3y agoObviously companies think it is worth a lot for certain employees to be quiet, so they pay accordingly. There is no "should" going on here, there is only what the two parties agree to.
- mistrial9 3y agoLOL - you have stumbled upon the pay grades for security and executive management directly ! they absolutely are paid more to participate but stay quiet. It is a daily requirement.
- jjk166 3y agoIf someone else would pay them 500k to reveal the secret, then yes. Maybe don't give 500k secrets to people producing only 50k of value.
- bobthepanda 3y agoA noncompete has value. If its worth 50k then pay for a noncompete equivalent to 50k wages worth of hours. Simple as that.
- charcircuit 3y agoYou can work at 2 companies without leaving either.
- bobthepanda 3y agopresumably the noncompete wouldn't apply then, if the two companies were not competing, and then you wouldn't need to pay them at all.
- juped 3y agoto the struggle SWEs who exaggerate your salary on HN and are upvoting this comment to the top: please stop and think for a second
- bumby 3y agoEmployees 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.
- shermozle 3y agoYou're suggesting that if an employee wants to change jobs, they should work in a field for which they have less expertise and thus get paid less. How is that reasonable?
- bumby 3y agoThat is not what I’m implying. You can work in a similar industry without taking trade secrets, except in the case of inevitable disclosure. For example, if you quit writing for Coke you can still go work for Pepsi without disclosing the Coke recipe.
- caskstrength 3y agoRight, and you don't need a non-compete to go after former employee stealing your IP.
- bumby 3y agoNon-competes and NDAs are literally the mechanisms that companies try to protect their trade secrets. Patents, copyrights, etc cover publically disclosed IP. The OP was about how non-competes make sense in an IP-intensive field, like quant finance. The reason is that these contracts help protect the IP by explicitly stating their case. Your comment goes against the very foundation of IP law: creating reasonably fair commercial opportunities. If I can extort you because you hired me and I learned your secrets, I think that pushes the scales beyond "reasonable."
- olliej 3y agoNo, NDAs are the tool to stop your employees leaking information. Non competes are the tools you use to avoid paying market price for your employee.
- creer 3y agoFor a large team, and finance, there is no amount of pay that could compare to the potential gain of creating your own firm to reimplement some specific idea you learned on the job. The more likely response then would be to move the team somewhere that does allow non-competes?