Companies don’t really need non-competes anymore. Some companies take an extremely broad interpretation of IP confidentiality, where they consider doing any work in the industry during your lifetime an inevitable confidentiality violation. They argue it would be impossible for you to work elsewhere in this industry during your entire career without violating confidentiality with the technical and business instincts you bring to that domain. It doesn’t require conscious violation on your part (they argue).
So beware and read your employment agreement carefully.
More here https://www.promarket.org/2024/02/08/confidentiality-agreeme...
And this is the insane legal doctrine behind this
In fact, 12% of hourly workers earning $20 or less had to sign non-competes. These workers do not have access to corporate secrets. It simply reduces their power to negotiate with their employer.
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/non-compete-cont...
They are also tightening up the contract law around non competes to reduce the impact of the scare tactics employers have been using to bind low level employees with unenforceable, but still litigable, contract terms.
And scare tactics are really all they are (in this country), because even before they do this the courts have a track record in this country of looking very dimly on overly broad or restrictive non compete 'agreements'.