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.
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.
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."
And that is much better case than NCA since it would only apply in specific narrow cases and wouldn't prevent a McDonalds employee from working in fast food industry for a year, for example.
I disagree. Big tech companies often force employees to sign very broad non-competes ("You can't go to a company that competes with us in any market") which in case of such companies covers almost everything (which tech company doesn't compete with Amazon in some way?). Granted, as far as I know big tech rarely enforces non-competes in case of regular ICs, but I would still prefer NCAs to be unenforceable and let the quant firms argue in courts regarding inevitable disclosure for some specific narrow cases where it is applicable.
> Also elsewhere I’ve mentioned how some jurisdictions provide caveats, like refusing to enforce NCAs when an employee earns less than a certain threshold (eg $75k).
I don't see why salary makes a difference here. Some random FAANG IC also shouldn't be forced to sign a NCA.
> Well-crafted laws don’t throw out the baby with the bath water
What baby? SV "baby" seems to be doing just fine in Cali with unenforceable non-competes.
I consider my position (employers can and should use other mechanisms to go after employees that _really_ stealing their IP instead of forcing NCAs on every random McDonalds employee or even junior tech IC) valid reply to position stated by OP. I stand by my words.
> And there are significant cases on the news where an employee steals trade secrets and takes them to a competitor (see Levandowski among others).
Levandowski example proves my point though since he did it in a state that doesn't enforce NCAs and Google found the way to go after him.
> It comes across like you have an axe to grind rather than making a thoughtful point.
That ad hominem was uncalled for.
To underscore it one more time, we both agree that there are other mechanisms like NDAs that protect IP. However, when used in conjunction with the inevitable disclosure doctrine, these prevent someone from being hired by a competitor. So they are doing the same thing as NCAs in the vein of the OP. If the end is the same (prevent hiring by a competitor to protect IP), your point is a pedantic distinction without a difference. If you disagree, you need to provide a rationale as to why an NDA + inevitable disclosure scenario shouldn't be allowed to prevent hiring by a competitor.
Levandowski's trial was settled before it concluded, so it doesn't really prove much in terms of legality, other than the term "trade secret" is nebulous and companies will use whatever is at their disposal to protect IP. One of the takeaways for many companies is that they need to rigorously pursue NDAs with their employees which, again, would have the same potential consequence as NCAs when inevitable disclose exists.
Your whole argument belies a misunderstanding of IP law.
"If an employee knows trade secrets, they should be paid not to move"
(except, knowledge doesn't equate to IP rights)
"Other mechanisms exist to protect IP"
(yes, except some of those mechanism also prevent being hired by competitors, so it doesn't really do much in terms of changing the outcome in the cases pertinent to this discussion)
"It's dumb to have McDonalds employees sign NCAs"
(smart legislators have already addressed this by refusing to enforce NCAs for lower-salaried employees who aren't at risk of exposing trade secrets)
Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum because you either aren't getting the distinction or don't want to understand it so you can 'stand by your words'.