1) It depends on what your field is. For example, if you are a software engineer, moving to a company that doesn't compete is easy. If you work on software for

1) It depends on what your field is. For example, if you are a software engineer, moving to a company that doesn't compete is easy. If you work on software for Tesla, that doesn't mean that you can only work for car companies. So being barred from working for Ford for a year may not be a big deal. Keep that in mind. However, if you work as a mechanical engineer on electric motors, your skillset does limit you somewhat and the non-compete matters more. 2) It depends on the size of the company. At the start of my career, I worried about stuff like this a lot, to the point of trying to negotiate it. In retrospect, I'm a software engineer, so I don't really need to work for a competitor for my skillset to be useful, so I think I was wasting my time. I should have been negotiating for higher salaries instead (that's something that hiring managers can readily negotiate on and don't have to go to legal for). 3) For what it's worth, I've gone to an experienced employment lawyer several times and he's always advised me to just sign. He said that it's very unlikely to be enforced anyway and in his mind not something worth negotiating over. Keep in mind, for example, that Amazon and Google might be competitors, so going from AWS to Google Cloud might be a problem with that contract, but moving from AWS to Google Search wouldn't be since that's not a competing division. So that's my story, but IANAL and everyone is different.