In Europe a lot of these non competes are unenforceable. I work for a U.S startup in the U.K. (British citizen) some of the clauses in our contract are just flat out illegal. It’s also 26 pages long, which is almost unheard of in the U.K. I asked about it and it turns out it was written at a U.S law firm.

To me at least, it doesn't matter if it's enforceable or not. I don't want to go through the hassle of fighting it in court, dealing with lawyers, when I could avoid it by going elsewhere. Obviously I'm lucky to be able to do that, and if I was under pressure for a new job it would be a different story.

I would expect 26 pages is unheard of even in the USA.

26 pages? That's just ridiculous.

Wouldn't your salary during the employment term be that consideration?

Consideration need not be during the same period. I can pay you $X today for something that covers the next N years.

As I understand the state laws - not if it's not stated as such. They don't allow it to be implicit in "you get salary X each year and operate under noncompete Y". A restriction on future work like that would require explicit compensation.

(And as for why people don't just add "compensated via your salary" to the boilerplate - that's an open-ended transaction, not a defined amount of compensation for the year of noncompete restriction.)

Which states?