Except that the junior engineer's old company won't sue because he is just a junior engineer...
The non-compete risk probably comes only with the star hires / client facing employees (risk of clients being lured to the other company).
The non-compete risk probably comes only with the star hires / client facing employees (risk of clients being lured to the other company).
True in practice, but there is risk.
Plus, it's just a shitty conversation to be compelled to have when you're trying to convince someone to hire you. ("One last thing, I'm under this non-compete, so can I get a written agreement to cover legal costs?") An executive can probably get that protection. For a junior, that's a deal breaker. And typically, the vindictive or paranoid firm won't actually sue your next company, they'll just ask your new firm to fire you... and often (for low-level people like software engineers) they will.
Tech is diverse enough and "competition" generally amorphously-defined enough that junior engineers rarely get strung up on non-competes. It's more of an issue in finance.
The only time it happens in tech is when there's a deliberate attempt to destroy someone's reputation, like what a few people (none especially important) from Google tried to do after I left that place.
If your former company is not vindictive enough to send a copy of the form to your new employer, you win. If they are vindictive enough - you lose, but you would have lost if you told your prospective employer that you were bound by a non-compete anyway.
The mere fact that skilled workers need to contemplate such deceptive tactics as part of their everyday "pursuit of happiness" so that a business can enjoy some risk mitigation I think underlines that Hawaii is spot on in making non-competes outright illegal.
That sucks, sorry. I agree it is an unnecessary complication for engineers which may or may not give companies any real protection.