Google Is Allegedly Paying Top AI Researchers to Just Sit Around and Not Work for the Competition

Google apparently has one weird trick to hoard its talent from poachers: paying them to not work. As Business Insider reports, some United Kingdom-based employees at Google's DeepMind AI lab are paid to do nothing for six months — or, in fewer cases, up to a year — after they quit their jobs. Known as "garden leave," this type of cushy clause is the luckier stepsister to so-called "noncompete" agreements, which prohibit employees and contractors from working with a competitor for a designated period of time after they depart an employer. Ostensibly meant to prevent aggressive poaching, these sorts of clauses also bar outgoing employees from working with competitors. Often deployed in tandem with noncompetes, garden leave agreements are more prevalent in the UK than across the pond in the United States, where according to the Horton Group law firm, such clauses are generally reserved for "highly-paid executives." Though it seems like a pretty good gig — or lack thereof — if you can ... Read full article.