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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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).

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time, you're not gaining new knowledge / IP, so by the time you actually start working your knowledge is several months out of date.

Few of my friends are in quant, but I have never heard anything like this. Can an employee just apply for notice period after a month of joining and be paid 6-24 month of salary?

The length of paid leave is at the discretion of the company, of course.

But can the non compete be longer than paid leave?

I dont think employers have to worry about that when the employee works his whole life to be a quant in such a competitive industry.

After a month they wouldn’t know much, so the firm would just let them go. The firm picks the leave duration, not the employee.

And after only a month their sign-on would be subject to claw back.

So what's the incentive to keep working under those conditions?

I guess bigger and better bonuses in the future?

Like, why would you quite and semi-retire for 1-2 years when you can keep working for like 5 years and actually retire?

(I'm just LARPing, I have been out of the industry for a few years by now...)

I guess it depends where you are in your career. If you're really aiming at a five year time horizon, then I can see it making sense to stick around. But, if you're yonger a year or two fully-paid vacation sounds pretty tempting.

Other than getting paid without working for 6-24 months? Did I misread?

I think the GP meant why should you work when you can get paid without working.

You could work for a much higher bonus and salary. The way gardening leave has been described here is for people who are not looking to take their highly valuable knowledge somewhere else for higher bonus / salary.

In the financial industry, you don’t get your bonus when you’re on garden leave. This is usually the majority of your pay, so while it’s definitely nice to be paid to do nothing (I’m on garden leave currently until next September), you’re not earning up to your potential.

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