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pay cut, and while they're "gardening", they're out of the game for a year and their skills/knowledge becomes a little out of date.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 18 hours ago | parent [-]

    > 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 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly: That person falls into the 0.01% of the finance industry.

▲

coderatlarge 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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…