bigbottom
Footballguy
I'm going to disagree a bit here. Companies that are smart enough to attract employees they want and smart enough to go through all the internal steps to craft non-compete agreements aren't going to suddenly become stupid and helplessly lose employees to other companies. They'll figure out quite quickly how to train and retain employees within the bounds of what's now allowed. Companies don't train employees as a gift to employees. They do it to benefit their own company.They were a huge deal in a whole lot of industries and jurisdictions. And the argument on keeping wages low is that they impacted employment mobility. Now, if you want to keep a key employee from leaving for a competitor, you have to pay them to stay rather than rely on enforcing a contractual obligation. But there are unintended consequences as well in that companies will be more hesitant to invest in training employees and giving them access to key proprietary information if they can just leave and go to your competitor across the street. This could negatively impact employee development.
There is indeed truth to what you say. But I also think you might be overestimating how “smart” many companies are.