[dhx]

1. There's two costs being confused here. The impact of a doctor burning out or otherwise retiring and no longer using their qualifications, requiring the training of a junior doctor with required specialisations at a potential cost of USD$250k-$1M[1] and many years of waiting. And the much less significant impact of a doctor using their qualifications to find an equivalent job with a different employer. In the later example, it's a fairly standard professional recruitment process and cost.

2. Stock options are a risky gamble for employees and employers alike. Neither party can rely upon stock options too heavily as a retention tool because no one knows what the stock options would be worth 3 years in the future. If it's really essential to keep employees on for numerous years then guaranteed salary increases would be a better way to ensure employees are adequately compensated for the detriment to their career of staying in the same organisation doing the same work for a long period of time. And of course, proactively ensuring employee salaries are _always_ in the top decile of industry/specialisation salaries is needed too because it is not uncommon for some labour rates to move +10% in a single month. Many employers with a high NIPE/PPE[2] could easily pay higher salaries if they desired to keep employees for longer periods of time.

3. Aren't patents are meant to protect such R&D investments? Employers benefit from hiring from each other creating a mixture of technical knowledge and culture that is gained from employees having worked in different roles and projects elsewhere. Thus I struggle to comprehend why employee movement would be viewed as a net negative overall that justifies non-compete agreements.

[1] https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-healt...

[2] https://tipalti.com/profit-per-employee/