That's partly why so few quantitative trading firms reside in California, whose labor-friendly laws have long favored employee mobility and competition. Exhibit A: The Voleon Group, a prominent quantitative-trading firm based in Berkeley, California, that manages about $5 billion in assets. The hedge fund has bulldozed past state prohibitions to not just impose noncompetes, but impose some of the harshest noncompetes in the entire industry, according to seven former employees, industry experts, and documents detailing the firm's restrictive covenants. Like so many other quant-trading firms, Voleon took care to protect its edge. Other employees Insider spoke with have a less generous view, with several describing the company as stingy — a third ex-employee bemoaned the company as "notoriously cheap" on compensation.

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Persons: Kathy Hochul's, haven't, Michael Kharitonov, Jon McAuliffe, Shaw, — Kharitonov, McAuliffe, Voleon, —, Harry Lipman, Rottenberg Lipman Rich, Lipman, bemoaned, noncompetes, Martin Wainwright, Howard Aiken, Wainwright, hasn't, It's, Jessica Riggin, Rukin Hyland, Riggin, specter, James Hannaway, Sanford Heisler Sharp, Hochul, Rob Bonta, Sen, Anna Caballero, foisting, Caballero, Voleon's Organizations: New, Gov, University of California, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Wall Street, Google, Citadel, Sigma, That's, Big Tech, Darwin, MIT, Berkeley, California, Labor Locations: New York, California, Berkeley , California, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, Voleon, Delaware, Washington ,