How Companies Kill Their Employees' Job Searches
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
At a bare minimum, non-competes should entail full salary and benefits during the period of non-competition ("gardening leave") plus an allowance (15% or $30k per year, whichever is less) for education and training during the period, plus a well-defined scope of competition.
If you won't pay someone not to work for a competitor for two years, then it's not fucking important that he not work for the competitor. So let him go.
Plenty of just-worlders say things like, "Well, no one should sign a contract like that." The problem is that some people are desperate and ruin the negotiation for all of us, and that it's embarrassing to negotiate those terms as an individual. When you're really just looking out for your rights, you end up having to identify yourself as potentially litigious before you even start. This kind of nonsense is exactly why we, in software, need either a professional guild or a union.
What I've been told by my lawyer is basically the only time it will hold up is if you can prove that it was violated and your company was significantly harmed as a result (ex: You took 50 clients with you to the new firm). And the time period was reasonable (ex: 5+ year non-competes are likely never held up as the time period is absolutely unreasonable in almost all cases)
Additionally, it has to be worth it to the company to actually go after the person who violated the agreement - it is civil not criminal.
Which in the end results in a system where they are hardly ever enforced if violated and serve more to scare people from violating them then actually being legally enforceable.