A) A lot of companies go to their lawyers and say, "hey, can you give me some standard forms to have employees fill out". Non-compete clauses (for better or wor

A) A lot of companies go to their lawyers and say, "hey, can you give me some standard forms to have employees fill out". Non-compete clauses (for better or worse, and I think for worse) have become a part of that standard contract. Generally, the more standardized your paperwork is, the less you pay lawyers. B) I fully agree with you that you should never trust someone who says that they don't plan to collect on a contract. Peoples' intentions often change once money is involved. But for a typical software engineer (pretty common on this forum), your skills typically transfer to many non-competitors anyway. If you work for Spotify[1] and have a non-compete, sure, you should fully assume that the non-compete will be enforced if you jump ship for Pandora. But I'd venture to guess that most Spotify employees don't move on to direct competitors anyway, but rather to software engineering roles at companies that do unrelated things. C) Like anything else, it's a calculated risk. When I talked to my lawyer, he said that many people just ignore non-competes and don't have any issues, but that some people have painful legal battles over them. So before signing one, ponder the following: Are you likely to want to leave to a competitor of the company that wants you to sign a non-compete? Do you think you will want to start your own company that competes? Are you going to be employable among non-competitors? For many people this is a non-issue. [1] I'm just using Spotify as an example. I have no idea what their employment paperwork looks like.