I do too and it feels to some extent that its about sending a message. I worked at Citadel, and they had these posters about Integrity, Winning and being a meri

I do too and it feels to some extent that its about sending a message. I worked at Citadel, and they had these posters about Integrity, Winning and being a meritocracy and all that but their ever more constraining non-competes completely flew in the face of it and it was upon them putting one of those agreements on me that I started to become disillusioned with the firm (around the same time that I found that Ken Griffin was donating to Trump's campaign). I tried to negotiate to get them to at least agree making the non-compete periods pay out my full comp and not just base, but they absolutely refused to budge an inch. Some people I knew there had non-competes locked in at their base salary when they started, which in some cases was 10+ years ago, meaning that it was a relatively paltry amount. They also had a clause in them that stipulated that it was 100% at the discretion of the firm as to whether they would enforce it or not- meaning that it wasn't even a guaranteed paycheck if you left... they would decide- and only after you left or were fired- if they were going to enforce it, leaving you in limbo until they made their decision. F non-competes. Mine worked out okay, my wife got burned hard on them and it took her career at least 2 years to recover from hers.