Really?? I've lived and worked in Massachusetts and Washington, both states with very strong support for non-competes, prior to living in California, and, as a skilled worker (bachelors and masters degrees in computer science, mba, many years experience in tech) I've not had trouble working in many companies that don't compete with each other. And even in companies that do, as long as I wasn't working in directly competitive parts. And I've had collectively hundreds of thousands of colleagues who've also created careers across companies.

I mean, I'm in California so my employer can't prevent me from taking a competing job, but the contract does cover starting a business in your free time and they definitely seem to think doing anything on a computer competes with them.