It's probably more along the lines of an agreement that he'll get a huge payout if he doesn't work at a competitor for a year. He could certainly go and work fo

It's probably more along the lines of an agreement that he'll get a huge payout if he doesn't work at a competitor for a year. He could certainly go and work for another company right now (there's no legal way to prevent him from doing that, as you pointed out), but he'd lose out on part of his severance pay.