are non-compete agreements just for suckers?
jackowayed: It doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me.I had to sign one for my job this summer (small tech consulting firm that's now doing a couple products and less consulting), but it was pretty limited. It just said that I wouldn't work in the couple of pretty-specific fields that my company's products are in for the next year.One nice thing about the one they gave me was that they had a clause saying that it did not in any way prevent me from using the programming knowledge that I'm gaining, just the specific knowledge about the fields the products are in.Now, I wouldn't be comfortable of signing one much longer than a year. A lot can change in say, 5 years. But 1 year so that you can't steal their ideas or have an unfair advantage in competing with them because you know their plans is fairly reasonable.