[v5v3]

In UK it's called gardening leave. A period when you are still employed but not at work and can't join another company without agreement.

Uk law generally is that non compete clause is ok, if the length of time is reasonable. But you can't stop a person with a trade from applying that trade unreasonably.

Most tend to be 3-6 months.

Normally it's to stop a person leaving from stealing clients.

[kelnos]

US finance has the same thing, and also calls it gardening leave. In our case I think it's reasonably common for it to be as long as a year.

Downside for finance folks is that the usually make a decent chunk of their compensation through bonuses, not their base salary. So their gardening-leave pay ends up being quite a pay cut, and while they're "gardening", they're out of the game for a year and their skills/knowledge becomes a little out of date.

[throwaway2037]

    > reasonably common for it to be as long as a year

Absolutely not. For ibanks, less than VP is one month. VP/ED/MD is three months. Sometimes it is six months for an MD, but that is extreme. The longest that I ever heard was someone who left Citadel as a portfolio manager had a TWO year gardening leave. How can that make any financial sense for Citadel? Before the HN crowd jumps in about that Citadel example being "reasonably common": There are probably less than 1,000 people globally who would fall under such an extreme contract.

[ivan_gammel]

I know an example of a garden leave for 2 years for an engineer working on trading algorithms. Maybe he falls into that 1000 people category (PhD in math).

[throwaway2037]

Exactly: That person falls into the 0.01% of the finance industry.

[coderatlarge]

for senior people whose alignment an employer needs to maintain after separation, it seems a lot more common to use some sort of advisory or consulting contractual relationship to keep them close as long as necessary…

[JoshTriplett]

> Normally it's to stop a person leaving from stealing clients.

I have a lot more sympathy for "you may not take clients with you" clauses than for "you may not work in the same industry" clauses.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

There is a difference between non-solicitation and non-compete. In the US, the former obligation might be acceptable while the later might not.

[throwaway2037]

The "non-solicitation" agreements are so stupid. There is a cottage industry in headhunters where you tell your next employer who you want to recruit, then they ask a 3rd party recruiter to go track down that person after X months... and invite them to interview. I have seen it so many times in career.

[ghaff]

It's definitely fuzzy. I mean, someone like an account rep or a financial advisor (and their clients) can't unknow somebody. So even if someone isn't taking their client list and calling/emailing everyone, there's inevitably going to be an element of client "poaching" so long as they're still in the same business.

[coderatlarge]

fyi there are clauses in contracts that try to control the use of residuals in “unaided memory” , trying to refer to stuff you just happen to know by dint of having been exposed to them, even though they’re in no explicit notes.