The first one is absolutely problematic, and I've been personally negatively affected by other people's non-competes a couple of times, but there's some nuance

The first one is absolutely problematic, and I've been personally negatively affected by other people's non-competes a couple of times, but there's some nuance there, I think. I would like to live in a world where companies invest heavily in educating and training their employees and where there's a lot of transparency within companies. One of the reasons you don't get that is because of the fear of an employee getting seduced by a tiny pay increase and losing a bunch of competitive edge / trade secrets / investment. There are other ways to address that than non-competes, granted, but we're not doing those things either. In place of more nuanced non-competes you just get more companies expecting you to take on the risk of buying your own education to be trained in a job, bureaucracy and lack of trust in employees, etc.