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What California used have was worse than non-competes. They had secret covenants between manor tech companies not to hire each others employees. I don't know if that has been completely eliminated. As for other states, you could ask why they have lots of stupid laws. As for California, you could ask why they have that stupid Proposition 13.

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The Apple/Google/Adobe/et al. non-hire collusion is probably on hold for now due to the govt. investigations.

The only good thing I can say about that era was that Google had their ass handed to them by Facebook, which was one of the few non-participants in the collusion. Google employees had few options but to go to Facebook in droves.

Proposition 13 has nothing to do with tech employment directly. It was created because politicians just couldn't help themselves from raising real estate taxes voluntarily.

Those covenants, by Google, Apple, Intel, Cisco, and others, were manifestly illegal. The settlement terms were rejected by the court, as I understand.

I also must credit Facebook for breaking the deal -- one of the few times I can support the company's stance.

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