Anti-poaching agreements are non-competes, just between firms rather than a firm and their employees.
> Anti-poaching agreements mean one company won't cold contact employees at another
No, that's not all they mean. The most trivial anti-poaching agreement might restrain itself that way, but anti-poaching agreements can and regularly have included agreements not to employ workers from the other firm, not merely to avoid certain active recruitment/solicitation steps.
I don't see anything about non-poaching agreements in a cursory look at Wikipedia's article non Non-competes[1].
> No, that's not all they mean. The most trivial anti-poaching agreement might restrain itself that way, but anti-poaching agreements can and regularly have included agreements not to employ workers from the other firm, not merely to avoid certain active recruitment/solicitation steps.
Yes, you're right. Thanks for the clarification. I guess what I should have said is the specific anti-poaching agreement that bonestamp2 mentioned was only about active recruitment. But still even with this broader definition of anti-poaching, they're not as bad as non-competes. A non-compete would prevent the founding of Intel (by former Fairchild Semiconductor employees), but a broad anti-poaching agreement would not prevent the founding of Intel.