[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…