There are a lot of people who simply don't have the resources to fight a non-compete clause. Do you think a fresh grad working at Amazon 1-2 years in an SWE role is equipped to take on Amazon's undoubtedly massive top talented legal team if they choose to litigate? The law may be on their side but the resources to pursue it may not and any reasonable doubt of being incorrect could be financial or even career suicide.

If a business can get even a small fraction of its labor to follow unenforcable/essentially illegal requirements, they've made significant headway, even if they don't ever choose to attempt to litigate. Over time, those practices can become normalized and set industry standards where they become more and more successful.

I think it should be illegal to even stipulate such requirements in contracts to begin with to prevent businesses from eroding labor rights over time. There should be massive fines in place that penalize even stipulating those sort of clauses to make sure businesses only include reasonable language/requirements.

This is ultimately what it comes down to. Contracts between very rich/powerful entities and relatively poor/powerless entities, in practice, can contain anything the rich/powerful entity wants because the poor/powerless entity cannot afford litigation. Cell phone contracts, car leases, employment agreements, basically anything written by a company and targeting an individual--just read one of them. All the clauses protect and benefit the company, and very little good is in there for the individual. And they are take-it-or-leave-it: There's generally no negotiation or ability to add individual-favoring terms [1]. Try negotiating the legal terms in your cable bill and let me know how that worked out for you. Contracts among equals tend to be more fair because each side is on a level playing field.

1: Yes, I am aware that there are a few software engineers out there with specialized skills who have successfully managed to negotiate some non-salary terms out of their employment agreements. Congratulations, you are not representative of the general employee population.

You negotiate with your feet by walking away and finding another company that has terms that are more to your liking. You may not have the power to rewrite the contracts presented to you, but you have the agency to choose where you want to work.

It's also a chilling effect on many potential employers, especially small ones. When I was with a very small consulting firm, if someone interested in employment had a non-compete that was remotely relevant--or even an NC that wasn't very clearly not relevant--it was a very short discussion. Management just wasn't prepared to take even a small risk.

Interesting, wonder if some startup that didn't want to deal with the risk could just have a checkbox if you have a current in-effect non-compete agreement and just pipe those applications to /dev/null? Maybe if more companies were picky, people would fight back and try to negotiate better agreements... but then again probably depends on location, In Silicon Valley you can be a more picky potential employee compared to say rural Ohio.

How would you know? What would someone intentionally violating noncompete mention it to an employer?

Lying to a potential employer is a pretty bad first step. If I caught you doing it, say because someone mentioned it in a casual conversation, I'm going to fire you the same day. Same with lying on a resume even if it's utterly irrelevant multiple years later. It's also going to color any future professional interaction because you're an untrustworthy individual.

I'm pretty sure I don't want to be in a position where I'd be fired if a 10-year old lie came out.

A union-like organization could allow workers to pool money to fight these fights.

Please, call it a guild or mutual aid society. Software developers don't like unions.

Somehow I think the legal bills fighting Amazon will be higher than any lost pay, and you might not win.