this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Most non-competes I've seen in the wild (when I was an HR, as well as in operations) have been pretty specific about the type of baned competing work as well. It's less often you can't work for our direct competition if offered a job and more you can't start a company as direct competition and you can try to steal our employees for X amount of time. It's rarely (because it likely unenforceable legally) you can't do any other work.
Yes, this makes sense, and again I'll emphasize anyone can put in a policy "oh you can't start a competing company" but there is a damn high threshold 99.9% of employees don't meet for this to be enforceable. It would be enforceable ina situation where you're very high up with strategic knowledge or information about the company or market that isn't public and you leave the company to try to capitalize on that information using the information you gained during your time at the company. Most people can agree that would be abuse of the company, but even then it can be challenging to prove in some situations.
Long of the short, most of these are unenforceable too unless you're in certain, strategic, leadership or mission critical areas of an org. The smaller the org the more potential you could actually be part of this group but it's on the employer to prove it, and again, you need to be compensated for it. They want to say you can't work for or start a competitor for a year? Cool, an enforceable agreement would be they pay you a year's wages on termination. If you aren't in that kind of a situation, it's people making stuff up and hoping to scare the labor market.