zlacker

>>pg_123+(OP)
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 two main issues I have with them are that firms tend to give them to just about everybody (instead of just to folks working very directly with real IP), and they only pay base salary, not something closer to actual total compensation (often multiples of the base pay).

Having said that, the quant firm is relatively unimportant and not a good reason to prevent a total noncompete law. It's probably better to just ban them then try and make allowances that aren't full of loopholes.

>>vgathe+Cg
Are quant firms positive sum for society? I can imagine that some trading leads to goods being priced more efficiently or w/e but I doubt the level of alpha these firms are chasing has positive externalities. If not, you should shouldn't really care about this hurting their industry.

>>thatgu+ev1
They are really not. The growth of financialization coincides with economic stagnation in U.S. If anything, the data shows the opposite. Finance sector is more or less a parasite on the productive economy.