[jmyeet]

Noncompetes should 100% require full-paid gardening leave to be enforceable.

You don't want me ot work for a competitor for a year? Great. You get to pay me full pay and benefits for that year. Let's see how keen companies are to enforce a noncompete then.

Even then they should be limited in scope but without paid gardening leave they should be utterly unenforceable.

[steveBK123]

Paid noncompete (gardening leave) is pretty common on Wall Street. It has gotten much more prevalent in the last 5-10 years, with companies ratcheting up the length and enforcing it on lower and lower level employees. Think - IC software engineers working on some random UI with no idea of current positions or trading strategies, making like $300k total being put on a 12 month leave.

The problem even with paid noncompetes is that you are only getting your salary, not bonus and in the roles it is enforced, salary kind of caps out and bonus ends up being 25%.. 50%.. 75%+ of your income.

Some firms have started to enforce garden leaves long enough that you are guaranteed to miss at least one, if not two bonus cycles.

Additionally, your health care coverage is revoked at most of these companies during your gardening leave so you have to decide whether to go without, take COBRA, or hope you are on your spouses plan already.

Finally, the terms of the contract are generally asymmetric. Your employer has the right to waive the garden leave, but you do not. So you don't know if you are getting a few months paid time off until the day you resign. For legal reasons most companies won't make an offer deal with you and give you a deal like "if you can get out of your garden leave at old job and start here earlier, we'll let you take a month off paid by us before you start" as it is solicitation.

That said - 3 month garden leave over the summer is awesome.

[genocidicbunny]

> The problem even with paid noncompetes is that you are only getting your salary, not bonus and in the roles it is enforced, salary kind of caps out and bonus ends up being 25%.. 50%.. 75%+ of your income.

Which is why they should be required to pay your TC+xx%, including any costs you may incur for things like health insurance, not just your salary.

[steveBK123]

Right, some sort of total compensation weighted average with more recent years weighted more heavily.

I forgot the other fun thing is that any of your deferred compensation is zero-d out as soon as you resign, even though you might be on garden leave for 12 (and now some cases, 18) months.

[billh]

> Your employer has the right to waive the garden leave, but you do not.

How is this not an illusory contract?

[smeagull]

I'd love that so much. I get paid a noncompete and can go on to work for someone else and how are they going to find out?

[Mountain_Skies]

The Work Number, an Equifax service that a shockingly large number of employers provide data to. If your new employer is one of these, and it probably would be unless it's a startup or a small family business, your old employer can see that you're now employed and who with.

[smeagull]

Giving employee data to Equifax sounds actionable.

[jeffreyrogers]

A lot of the high paying industries with non-competes are small and insular. If you violate your non-compete and are found out you will go to arbitration, probably get fired from your new job and have expensive legal fees (half the cost of arbitration + your lawyer). That's before the results of the arbitration.