[vsskanth]

I disagree.

Non-compete agreements severely disadvantage highly specialized professionals where there are only 2-3 employers in a specific area who can hire you for your skills. This reduces their leverage and allows companies to underpay their employees. This becomes a huge problem when you become experienced in your field and built up a network. One cannot simply restart their career in a different industry in many cases. With jobs becoming more specialized, this gives employers excessive leverage over employees.

As an alternative, I would prefer something like a fixed-term contract renewed every x years (typically 2-3 yrs) where you're free to move to a competitor at the end of your contract term. This protects the employers investment and also the employees leverage to negotiate higher wages or a promotion.

I would recommend looking at CA for the positive effects of banning non compete agreements.

If you're really working on proprietary material there are NDAs to protect the employer.