Money Stuff: Take the Gardening Leave

Big hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. is offering its employees a sweet deal in which, when they quit the firm, it will give them between three months and a year of fully paid vacation. Wait, no, not just fully paid; they’ll be paid 150% of their salary for this farewell vacation, and keep their health insurance. They’ll get paid more for not working there than for working there.[1] The only catch, and it is hardly worth calling a catch, is that during these months of well-compensated idleness, they can’t go work for another hedge fund. Well but why would they? It seems to me that getting paid 150% of a hedge fund salary to not work at a hedge fund is obviously strictly better than getting paid 100% of a hedge fund salary to work at a hedge fund.

Amazingly, not everyone at D.E. Shaw sees it that way: