There are still edge cases in California too, or at least one: if you leave partnership (not employment) with an LLC registered in _another_ state, non-competes still apply. I know this from experience with H1, the Holacracy-making company. I don't blame them for having a non-compete, and I wasn't interested in founding a competitor or working for one of their clients, but it was weird to think those actions could make me liable.
http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/06/23/tech-sector-to-rev...
2 - intimidation works quite well up to your ability to front giant legal expenses. While stuff may or may not be unreasonable, most of us aren't in a position to front tens of thousands of dollars that you probably won't get back.
Illinois for instance went from "non-compete's were basically not worth the paper they were printed on" to "hmm, might need a judgement to figure it out, is it worth it?"
Non-competes, non-solicits, and (except in a severance) non-disparagement clauses are shitty practices that deserve to die in a taint fire.
The non-compete risk probably comes only with the star hires / client facing employees (risk of clients being lured to the other company).
True in practice, but there is risk.
Plus, it's just a shitty conversation to be compelled to have when you're trying to convince someone to hire you. ("One last thing, I'm under this non-compete, so can I get a written agreement to cover legal costs?") An executive can probably get that protection. For a junior, that's a deal breaker. And typically, the vindictive or paranoid firm won't actually sue your next company, they'll just ask your new firm to fire you... and often (for low-level people like software engineers) they will.
Tech is diverse enough and "competition" generally amorphously-defined enough that junior engineers rarely get strung up on non-competes. It's more of an issue in finance.
The only time it happens in tech is when there's a deliberate attempt to destroy someone's reputation, like what a few people (none especially important) from Google tried to do after I left that place.
If your former company is not vindictive enough to send a copy of the form to your new employer, you win. If they are vindictive enough - you lose, but you would have lost if you told your prospective employer that you were bound by a non-compete anyway.
The mere fact that skilled workers need to contemplate such deceptive tactics as part of their everyday "pursuit of happiness" so that a business can enjoy some risk mitigation I think underlines that Hawaii is spot on in making non-competes outright illegal.
That sucks, sorry. I agree it is an unnecessary complication for engineers which may or may not give companies any real protection.
An agreement is not enforceable if it is unreasonable, and denying someone the opportunity to make a living is pretty much unreasonable out of the box. Of course it's not true in every case, but it is mostly true for "techie jobs".
(I am not a laywer, the above is not legal advice).