[bee_rider]

But what’s the status quo? My perception at least is that non-competes almost never get enforced or are struck down if they do get enforced, usually, outside of really specific situations. I guess my assumption is that the companies don’t offer the latter because they don’t actually care very much about individual engineers going to do similar jobs at the competition, and they just try to get their employees to sign as many contracts as possible because… “why not?” I guess.

[bobthepanda]

i can’t find the local news article because the link is dead, but here is a change.org petition about a Subway employee having a noncompete enforced: https://www.change.org/p/subway-restaurants-absurd-non-compe...

The NYT has more examples including a summer camp counselor: https://archive.ph/1BvoM

If the noncompete truly has no value, and it is also not worth paying out for, then it should just not be in the employment contract to start.

[bee_rider]

Oh, mea culpa then. I guess I’ve made a popular incorrect assumption given that people keep signing these things.