"Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace

"Others note that Washington State has tougher noncompete clauses in its labor laws than does California, which can give established firms some peace of mind about setting up shop in Seattle but frustrate venture capitalists by making it harder for people to walk out of one company and start a competitor." That right there is enough to give any engineer pause about going to work for a company in Seattle. Anna-Lee Saxenian's work in the dated, but still relevant "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" goes into a fair amount of detail how the non-compete environment on Route 128 ended up undermining the Boston area relative to the Bay area. 99% of companies are simply not set up to allow success of new ideas related to the core business, but not actually the core business. Non-competes basically cause ideas to die because most companies are excellent at stifling execution on non-core projects.