True, but protection from stealing trade secrets and stealing customers are very different from ordinary devs facing non-competes. Every job I have taken in 25 years as a dev has them, never specifying what a competitor really means. If I work on optimizing compilers for Google I can't work at another company for a year? Amazon has actually enforced them against nonvps. Big companies basically compete against everything in the industry. You are confusing the issue imho. My current job says I am working under California law but still put a non-compete on my contract, because they want to make people think they can't leave.

> You are confusing the issue imho.

California companies often have you sign an agreement that prohibits working for competitors, and says they'll fire you if you do; as far as I know, those are enforceable. That seems to meet the naming convention of non-compete. Perhaps we need to use another word for the post-employment non-competes allowed in less civilized regions.

If you're working for a competitor while working for them...they probably should fire you simply as a matter of operational security unless you're doing the type of work where you wouldn't have any exposure to trade secrets.

Yeah, it's reasonable. Although it kind of kills any side projects if you're working at a big company; because name something fun to do that doesn't compete with Yahoo.

But that's what I think of, when someone says non-compete. Because it's the only kind of non-compete I've seen, no one has tried to get me to sign a post-employment non-compete.

Misuse of trade secrets is a completely different law to "non competes"

“Trade secrets” according to the Supreme Court anyway, are a “Common Law exception” to non-competes.