Even if a non-compete is legally unenforceable in court it can still be used to bully employees or those who attempt to hire them. I once worked at a consultin

Even if a non-compete is legally unenforceable in court it can still be used to bully employees or those who attempt to hire them. I once worked at a consulting company (one of the big dot-com consulting companies) that put a clause in the contract that said no employee could leave to go work for any client of the company. That was fine when the company was small and had few clients, but when they became large it prevented us from leaving to go to any reasonably successful firm because almost all of them were clients. If anyone attempted this the company would reach out to the potential employer and warn them not to hire the person. The other company would then back down because they didn't want to jeopardize their business relationship with the consulting firm. As the dot-com bubble burst and the consulting firm became a sinking ship they continued to enforce it. We had to wait for layoffs to be exempt from that clause.