Non-competes have various degrees of enforceability depending on where you live and/or where the company is headquartered. I would recommend reading up on those

Non-competes have various degrees of enforceability depending on where you live and/or where the company is headquartered. I would recommend reading up on those details, but suggest consulting a qualified lawyer to verify the jurisdictional details. The unpopular truth is that boilerplate noncompete agreements are common practice in most companies, big or small. I know people who have negotiated to not sign them, but I also know people who lost job offers by refusing to sign non-competes. If for whatever reason you cannot expose yourself to risk of a non-compete agreement and you're willing to give up this job offer, you can try pushing back. Practically speaking, it's rare for companies to try to enforce non-compete agreements against former employees for simply working at a competitor company. They only tend to come into play if you leave for a competing company and you're directly working to help that company compete against your former employer using knowledge or experience gained at the previous company. For example, if someone worked on XBox at Microsoft and then left for Sony to work on cameras (but not Playstation) then it's exceedingly unlikely that the company would even try to bring up the non-compete. However, if someone goes straight from the XBox team to the PlayStation team to work on the exact same feature, watch out. Even without a non-compete, the NDAs you signed could be invoked depending on the nature of this work, so not signing an NDA doesn't mean you're free and clear when moving to a competitor. However, that's not a guarantee. If you're in a situation where you cannot afford to be burdened by any possibility of a non-compete and you're in a position to give up this job offer, you can make your employment conditional on not having to sign the non-compete.