On the topic of the article...no-compete clauses have become fucking insane. I had to sign one with a 50-mile radius as a college intern for one company. I'm there to learn and to give you some cheap labor in the process, and I still have to sign the thing?! It's become so insanely overused to be destructive against professional mobility more than anything else, and I'm glad somebody is shining a light on that.
I know a guy who was assistant manager at an office supply store. He had a 75-mile, 3-year noncompete. I mean, jobs were turning shitty when I pulled the ripcord on the whole TPS report world eleven years ago. Now they're straight bullshit. I don't know much but I know that my daughter is going to learn that "employee" is an unenviable fall-back, not a goal.
This is yet another area where the powerful and powerless have diverged. Try to give an executive level person anything more than a 6 month, strictly in market non-compete and they will laugh so hard they choke. McDonald's, on the other hand, routinely uses them.