The problem is that the threat of litigation is enough to make them essentially enforced. Sure you could go to a lawyer that says this isn't worth the paper its

The problem is that the threat of litigation is enough to make them essentially enforced. Sure you could go to a lawyer that says this isn't worth the paper its printed on, but either you, or maybe your employer, is now going to have to fight this out in court. This is not theoretical. A few years back, my wife, who is in ad sales, had very deep relationships with certain companies. These people had become her friends, we vacationed with them. She took a job at AOL, which at the time held many properties like Engadget, Joystiq- there was a whole host of sites that no one had realized on the surface were owned by them, but they had a decent sized media empire at the time. She had to sign a non-compete saying that she couldn't call on anyone she called on at AOL for a period of 2 years. She joins, and smashes her goal. However, about 3 months in, there was a re-org, she was let go, probably for making too much, and got some paltry severance. She asked to be released from the non-compete. They said no. We lawyered up. He said straight out that he had represented AOL employees before, and they fight these things tooth and nail. He said we would probably win, but it would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and be a cloud over our head for at least the next year or two. He was just being brutally honest with us. We ended up not going that route. It took her several years to recover. She had to take some jobs at kind of shitty companies because no one wanted to touch her with a non-compete like that, and most of her value was in the relationships she brought to the table. AOL essentially got a book of new business for the cost of a few months salary and commission. Its absurd. My last company also tried to put an onerous non-compete on me- they only wanted to pay me my base salary which was a fraction of my total comp. They wouldn't even define who their competitors were. I fought against it hard. I was then labeled "difficult" by HR and what had been a bit of a rocket ship of a ride up there all of a sudden came to a stop- I stayed for another 2 years there, but it became clear there was a glass ceiling above me. Non-competes in any form need to go away. This is restraining the US economy from achieving its potential by reducing labor mobility.