This is only true of Amazon. As far as I'm aware, none of the others have non-competes (Google certainly doesn't).
So maybe the more succinct advice is, just don't work for Amazon.
Please have some empathy for people like me that can't waltz into any job and don't say things like this.
I'm not sure what happens if you're hired in California and then transfer somewhere else.
For example, if the company pays you your old salary for a year after you leave, the non-compete with be enforceable.
If they just part ways with no reasonable exchange of value for the non-compete period, all you have to claim is this is how you make your crust.
Those folk have a serious legal consititution.
Since it's Washington State we're talking about: Googlers who join in WA state do not have a Non-compete in their contract (at least the "rank and file" engineers), even though Google could add it and Amazon/Microsoft have one.
In fact Google took it a step further and tried to lobby to get non-compete banned in WA State:
There was an almost full-ban on non-compete that was proposed a few years ago in Washington State. Google came to the public hearings with full support for the law as it is (which make sense given the status for non compete in California - and how it had gotten sued by Microsoft over one employee, and now again by Amazon). The law would have made it that non-compete are void if laid-off, and void if over 1 year max or if you're not an executive employee.
But Microsoft, Amazon, and the hospitals lobbied hard against it. (Hospitals are using those non-competes on both nurses and doctors apparently)
So the bill got rewritten where it only applies to people with a total comp less than 185k, and where student debt could be subtracted to that 185k. This, again, got fought more by opponents.
Now the ban on non compete only applies to people whose yearly salary (total comp as listed on W-2) is less than 100k, So doctors and tech workers at those companies get nothing out of it, except the clarification that non compete:
- cannot be for longer than 18 months
- if employee is laid off and non compete is enforced, the company must pay base salary for the duration of non-compete.
Geekwire had a good coverage of it over the years:
https://www.geekwire.com/2016/non-compete-bill-stalls-washin...
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/effort-kill-non-competes-washi...
https://www.geekwire.com/2019/tech-leaders-sound-off-washing...
And the original bills: http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2015-16/Pdf/Bills/Hou...
http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2017-18/Pdf/Bills/Hou...
final bill: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1450&Initiativ...
Washington State has no income, capital gains, or payroll tax. All we[0] have are consumption taxes that people with lower incomes are forced to pay more of as a percentage of their incomes versus people with higher incomes. This is doubly so since people with higher incomes have the financial leverage to minimize consumption taxes[1]. There's little tax-based incentive to attract and retain people with high incomes. If anything, we are somewhat of a drain on the overall society because we price out and displace people who don't have those incomes while we pay, on a percentage-of-income basis, comparatively little back into society relative to what we're earning.
I'm certain some people will come along under me and crow about how this is the whole reason why they moved to Washington instead of another but I am not particularly moved by any reasoning someone might put forward.
0 - My bias: I am a very well paid employee living in Seattle so I include myself in this but am also active in advocacy for levying taxes on myself and people like me for a more equitable tax system in this city, county, and state.
1 - Buying in bulk, buying a single higher-cost good that will last longer than lower-cost goods that must be replaced, evading taxes by traveling or buying online and accepting the risk of not being held accountable for paying the consumption tax
I'd say that's valid enough reason to move on its own. I've lived in Seattle for forever and the weather is one of the things that has kept me here through economic ups and downs.
The cost of living is only "low" here for people like us who are already doing very well for ourselves and I'm not at all enjoying the yawing inequity becoming increasingly wider. I'm not someone who pines for the "better days" of yesteryear or wants to cling tightly to some treasured local watering hole. We need a sane tax policy and a sane housing policy otherwise this all comes to a crashing halt.