No. The terms of most non-compete prohibit you from working on a "competing product", they prohibit you from working at a company that works on a competing pro

No. The terms of most non-compete prohibit you from working on a "competing product", they prohibit you from working at a company that works on a competing product. Specifically if there is an intersection in products made by two companies, they are competitors. If you're in a small town there aren't that many different jobs, so a non-compete means "you cannot work" - e.g. if you have a Walmart job with a non-compete, you can't go work at Target. At the other end, if you work at a large tech company it turns out you probably can't work at any other large tech company. If you work at a startup you can't move to a large company, and vice versa. And "only banned for a period of time" is a nice way of glossing over a sim to twelve month period (pretty much as long as the company thinks that they can get away with) in which you no longer have healthcare, and ability to pay rent, etc because you can't get a market rate job. If a company believes that you leaving and working for someone else will cause them harm they should be willing to pay you to not work for those competitors.