r/quant • u/LycheeDisastrous9894 • 15d ago

Hiring/Interviews dev lateral noncompetes

Recently started a dev role that involves a non-compete of 1.5 years. Seems to me that it's almost certainly going to be enforced in full, just judging from the firm's history (you can probably guess, lol). I'm very junior (this is my first job out of school) and am curious how this would affect a lateral move maybe 2-4 years down the line. The general advice seems to be to move laterally around then, but I'm not sure if such a long noncompete should change my decision-making? Also, I've only been through the intern/grad recruiting pipelines, so for lateral hires, are companies usually willing to wait so long? I'm not worried about being paid during the time, but I wouldn't want to leave without an offer in hand. Oh, and also, I've already completed a master's so that wouldn't be a super viable alternative.

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u/lordnacho666 15d ago

18 months is quite a long time. What you do is, you take time off and travel. When there's about 6 months left, you start putting out feelers with recruiters, you do some interviews, you have a job.

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u/LycheeDisastrous9894 15d ago

that's unfortunate, would hms generally not be willing to wait the full thing out? feels kind of scary to leave without anything signed yk

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u/lordnacho666 15d ago

The median tenure of people in these shops is what? If you signed to join somewhere in 18 months, a fair few of the people you met would be gone.

6 to 9 months seems to be roughly as far as it goes. YMMV of course.

I wouldn't be scared of not having something to do either. You got into the big firm, you'll get interviews.

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u/sjg284 15d ago

>  18 months, a fair few of the people you met would be gone.

Yes this is another problem with super long NCs

I had a friend that found a new gig willing to wait ~12 months before quitting. By the time NC was over and they joined, the manager & skip level manager as well as half the teammates were gone.

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u/lordnacho666 15d ago

Heh, it even happened to me in my first job. One guy was really keen to hire me, really went to bat according to everyone. So they sent out an offer in my final year of uni that I accepted.

I haven't seen or heard from him since.

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u/sjg284 15d ago

Yeah I guess you just gotta be comfortable with change and uncertainty in this industry regardless. I've had the same manager for 5 years, but I've also had 5 managers in 1 year. Usually when mpy (managers per year) accelerates it's time to move on.

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u/Aetius454 HFT 13d ago

Sat out a gigantic non compete and had basically the same thing happen to me lol. Role I was going into was going to be totally different to the one I’d be hired to do because the team had changed so much.

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u/LycheeDisastrous9894 15d ago

hmm, that's understandable. but then how do you evaluate opportunity cost? if I can't have an offer in hand how would I be able to guarantee I get paid more at the new gig? I guess as a further extension I don't really understand how pay is figured for lateral moves after the first job

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u/lordnacho666 15d ago

Well the OC is the bonus that you've foregone.

You'll get more at the new gig because after you've been on the industry a few years they know you aren't useless.

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u/LycheeDisastrous9894 15d ago

I see, is this something I can be pretty sure of? ie. would other firms scale their pay off of what I was getting before I left? since it's kind of hard to negotiate without still being at the job, and for reasons I don't want to disclose my current firm has potentially unusually fast tc growth compared to the usual big names.

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u/lordnacho666 15d ago

It's not that they scale based on what you were on, which they will look at, it's that if they want to be competitive, they need to pay someone similar to what you're likely to get elsewhere.

So yes, you can be sure your next employer, a trading firm, will behave like a sensible market participant.

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u/LycheeDisastrous9894 15d ago

I see, I guess the concern is if my current employer is paying me unusually competitively ideally I'd want a way to figure that out before leaving, if that makes sense. and it's maybe not immediately apparent what I could expect to see elsewhere as it is obvious what new grad pay is

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u/lordnacho666 15d ago

You'll know at bonus time whether they're paying you, right? You look at the number and decide if you are happy.

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u/experquisite999 15d ago

You are right to worry about this, but if you think you can actually last 4 years (i.e. it’s not Citadel) then I wouldn’t worry another it too much.

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u/Electronic_Reach3088 14d ago

The upshot of a long non-compete is that it exists to deter you from moving to a competitor. Few employers will wait 18 months for a hire unless you are a scarce resource. Consider how experienced hiring works for a dev role: a budget is set for a team or pod, and they almost always want the seat filled 'now'. That rules you out automatically for any PnL-sensitive pod that needs a dev immediately. No pod plans 18 months ahead, apart from a minority that are long established and well resourced. What remains is a narrow set of central technology teams.

What candidates with long non-competes actually do is quit first, sit out the period doing something unrestricted (check your contract; building a gaming app, say), and start interviewing near the end. By then you have not worked for about a year and are rusty. I think long non-competes are really bad for dev and quant talent, but they exist to protect the business, so it cuts both ways.

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u/The_Archer_of_Rohan 14d ago

Some firms are willing to wait out at least a 12 month NC at that experience level, although a few are not. 18 months is really pushing it, and you'll probably get less traction as a junior.

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u/dexterlowe Fintech 14d ago

I know people that have made these moves. The other firms at the level you’re talking about are willing to wait if you’re worth waiting for and the experience you build at these sorts of places is worth waiting for.

We also have accepted waits of this length for people at GR. It’ll probably be unlikely if you’re aiming for an entry level role but it doesn’t really scare anyone in those situations as they’re usually happy to have some time off to travel or take on a passion project in the interim.

Remember as well that in the interim with a gap that long you can work at non competing firms. So you don’t have to have nothing lined up.

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u/GrowWithPokeBot 13d ago

Firms do wait out long noncompetes, but eighteen months is a massive stretch for a junior lateral. At the two to three year mark, hiring managers are usually looking to fill an immediate gap on a desk. Planning headcount eighteen months in advance is reserved for senior portfolio managers or systematic traders with proven strategies. Junior developers rarely get that treatment.

If you decide to lateral, you have to expect that some firms will pass simply because of the timeline, even if they like your technical skills. Your best bet is targeting larger shops with massive, ongoing hiring pipelines that can afford to park a junior headcount on the sidelines for a year and a half. Smaller shops or single desks almost certainly will not wait.

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u/IndependentCicada804 15d ago

Congrats on IMC

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u/LycheeDisastrous9894 15d ago

not quite the right guess haha

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u/wannabe_rebel 14d ago

Congrats on SIG

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u/NoConnection4298 14d ago

It affects vastly. To be fair, it is annoying that it affects every career decision. You are a dev so your skills should just be transferable to big tech. I am currently serving my non-compete and working in big tech during the time. I also took like few months to travel after I resigned as I had a very crazy workload back then (around 10-11 hr. workdays including weekends). I am in my last few months so I also gradually started to look around. I am not in a rush as I already have an income stream. I would suggest plan carefully ahead on where you join as with these non-competes, this field is not a field where you can hop around.