So let's differentiate between conflicts and noncompetes. Conflicts arise when you do work for someone else while employed by a company that may compromise you

So let's differentiate between conflicts and noncompetes. Conflicts arise when you do work for someone else while employed by a company that may compromise your ability to effectively work for that company or may be detrimental to that company's business. This is an employment condition that is common and reasonable burt with large companies may exclude pretty much everything because large companies compete everywhere. Often companies will have a blanket rule on such things. This could be as simple as "this is your full time job, you can't have another" but it shouldn't exclude running a restaurant if your company is a food delivery app. Noncompetes apply after the end of employment. There are a very few high-level employees for which this makes sense. If someone can leave a company and take all that company's clients then that's a problem. But again noncompetes are used for normal employees that make no sense. We don't need to ban them. We need to force companies to pay for the privilege. Courts generally uphold the principle that a company can't deny you the reasonable ability to earn a living. So if you're a plumber and your noncompete says you can't work for another plumber within the same state then that's likely not enforceable. Rather than this interpretation, how about we force companies to say "we will pay you a year's salary upon termination and you agree not to work for X". I think you'll see a whole lot less noncompetes.