It doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. I had to sign one for my job this summer (small tech consulting firm that's now doing a couple products and less

It doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. I had to sign one for my job this summer (small tech consulting firm that's now doing a couple products and less consulting), but it was pretty limited. It just said that I wouldn't work in the couple of pretty-specific fields that my company's products are in for the next year. One nice thing about the one they gave me was that they had a clause saying that it did not in any way prevent me from using the programming knowledge that I'm gaining, just the specific knowledge about the fields the products are in. Now, I wouldn't be comfortable of signing one much longer than a year. A lot can change in say, 5 years. But 1 year so that you can't steal their ideas or have an unfair advantage in competing with them because you know their plans is fairly reasonable.