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Or sometimes, like mine, that you can't quit your contract early to apply for a full colleague position at the company you're being contracted out to.

Yes.

I had a non-compete handed to me when I lived in California. I laughed my ass off and signed it. When I left the dumbass VP of HR threatened me with it.

My response was "Could you pretty please try to enforce it? My lawyer would absolutely love to represent me in court. FYI you know my lawyer. He was the paralegal that told you the non-compete contract wasn't legal. You then screwed him over and got him laid him off. Guess who passed the bar exam 6 months ago!"

They probably were, but to find out you'd have to go to court, and your average person doesn't want to do that.

I asked my dad about it. He said they've been around ever since he started taking salaried positions (which would mean roughly since the 70s~80s)

I think so, yes. If you read the actual rule (https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/noncompete-rule.pdf) it says a noncompete is something against "seeking or accepting work in the United States with a different person". Since you're working in the first part with a contracting agency, and then going to work with a different company, the rule seems applicable here.

I'm not sure why they use "person", but I'm assuming your W-2 or 1099 would have different companies, and the different companies would have different presidents/CEOs/chairmen, so it would objectively be different both in the general legal Romney-style "corporations are people" person and the literal dictionary person.

That's exactly what a non-compete is. Your job can no longer stop you from quitting and working for a competitor.

That's a good question (but you might want to rephrase it to something clearer).

Canadian here. I had one for working in a call centre ffs. And afaik we don't have laws against it. :(

That's just so they can treat you like crap and under pay you, so that you can't just go be a handy many somewhere else. If you lived in California it would have already been unenforceable anyway though.

And if your employer doesn’t want you working elsewhere, they should put you on garden leave.

Yes big deal. However, I'm not sure if this will survive the supreme court.

Is this a big deal in terms of allowing people to more easily quit their jobs and take new ones? Yes.

Is this a big deal in terms of boosting innovation and economic productivity by allowing ideas to move more freely between businesses? Maybe.

Is this a big deal in terms of harming businesses or causing radical shakeups at businesses? No. States like California already ban non competes as do most western countries, companies just keep on going, truly proprietary innovations are already going to be covered by NDAs.

100%. These non-competes essentially lock employees in to their existing employer, unless they want to find a job in a completely unrelated sector (and likely take a massive payout, which, especially these days, is near financial suicide). This will have enormous ramifications for companies with toxic culture, as now people don't have to put up with their crap. This allows for freedom of economic mobility, and more control of one's own life.

I’m going to go against the crowd and say that while I think it’s a good move to make it official non competes were effectively already declared unenforceable via the court system. It’s rarely used for the average worker unless something truly fucky was going on and the courts would usually side with the employee no matter what unless something truly fucky was going on.

18% of all working people in the US are under non-competes. This is a huge deal.