The agreement is between the employee and the employer, and is a term of negotiation just like salary. The two non-compete agreements I've entered into both in

The agreement is between the employee and the employer, and is a term of negotiation just like salary. The two non-compete agreements I've entered into both include provisions to be paid if the company chooses to enforce it. When I worked at IBM and received a stock grant, they included non-solicitation of employees and customers as a term of the grant (though no non-compete). If the non-compete agreement includes reasonable consideration, I think banning them would be wrong.