| 1. I think the end-game here is salary-parity, no? If Practice A learns that Practice B is taking their employees for a marginal salary difference, that forces Practice A to improve their compensation package. But I don't think I fully understand this example. Why does it cost $250k to hire an MD? Why does Practice B not need to pay this cost, is it because they can skip the vetting process since A has already performed it? 2. If it's an acui-hire, the only way it can be successful (in real terms, not just fake "retention" terms) is if the acquired team is consenting to the acquisition and partnership. If the acquirer can't create a deal (involving stock options, work lifestyle guarantees, whatever) that's successful in the eyes of their prospective future employees, non-competes and non-poaches simply delay the inevitable. This is to the detriment of "we the people", because we want good people to be productively working on important things. In my not incredibly informed opinion, NCs for acquihires smell lazy and inefficient, because they optimize for the wrong metrics (employee retention vs value creation + satisfaction). If there's uncertainty about the long-term success of the merger, it can be factored into the acquisition price. To me, this implies that outlawing NCs would lead to fewer acquihires, on the margin. This seems like it would probably be a good thing. 3. I think there's some "basement" of trade secrets that we just need to accept are going to spread around. As a company, you have to understand that this bottom 20% of ideas are going to osmosis their way out with every departing employee, and there's nothing you can do about it other than work to retain employees and innovate new ideas. Similarly to the acquihire issue, NCs simply delay the inevitable here, and don't seem to provide much benefit "we the people" (or protection to "we the entrepreneurs"). |