zlacker

From my perspective it sounds civilized, but a friend of mine who sat out most of quarantine on gardening leave said he found it hard to support his family. You get your base salary, but not your bonuses, which are the majority of your pay in that industry. And since you can't get another job for the duration (or he couldn't, at any rate) it got a bit tougher than I would have assumed.

>>karate+(OP)
Gardening leave--especially if it's not even 100% base salary--isn't really a great answer especially to the degree that it normalizes non-competes. For a young unattached person who will use it to travel the world for a year on the cheap? Maybe. But others might be looking at easily a 50% total compensation cut and a year+ hole in mid-career employment. For most people, it's not a simple matter of "Great, I'll spend a year building a startup!"

>>karate+(OP)
The first thing somebody in this sort of job should do is establish a 1-2 year savings buffer, right?

>>karate+(OP)
The signing bonus from your next job should make up for the loss of pay during garden leave. Many finance companies are willing to hire 12-18 months in advance if you are filling a real need.

>>bee_ri+jf
Yes that's basically what everyone does.

>>pclmul+kf
This is true of all the situations I’m familiar with. I wonder if the other posters are talking about a different part of finance.

>>CSMast+cg
No, it's what everyone should do.

>>SpaceN+tj
Yeah, I'd still argue that a MAD system where highly paid (and presumably skilled) people need to take a year or two off between jobs is pretty inefficient. But if everyone knows that's the way things work, no one can say they were unaware of the rules.

>>ghaff+uz
Well the reason that this system exists is that there is real valuable knowledge that gives these companies competitive advantages. The usefulness of that knowledge drops off precipitously over time.

So the starting point for the system is that we need a way for these highly paid and skilled people to take a year or two off between jobs.