This depends. You're drawing a very restricted form of noncompete, one which is that a noncompete is only valid if for example I walk away with, say information

This depends. You're drawing a very restricted form of noncompete, one which is that a noncompete is only valid if for example I walk away with, say information about customer priorities and take them to a competitor. But there is a broader though still imo legitimate view that a company, paying a knowledge worker to solve a particular class of problems, has a right to the result of that work. An extreme example would be a company giving you a lab and research assistants, you working there a year and then parenting the results yourself and licensing them to a different company. It might not have required any insider info, and all the IP is ostensibly yours, but that feels abusive. Granted we're overlapping into IP assignment and moonlighting clauses, but they're all closely related.