No it's much worse than this. They never threaten the employee. They threaten the company hiring the individual. The employee might take it to court(and it most states win), but the hiring firm has no incentive to do so, and just moves on the next candidate.

They don't have to sue, they just have to send a letter to the new firm. Or even worse the new firm just has to ask "did you sign a non-compete?"

Yes, this is exactly how it works. Well, in my experience my CEO threatened me and the new company. I was actually given the choice between a lawsuit and a promotion (with a salary that was almost competitive with the new company) in the course of a single conversation. I chose to stand by my resignation because I'd been very unhappy there and it wasn't going to get any better if I showed them that I could be bullied into line.

I suppose I was lucky that the new company tried to negotiate a bit, but when my former employer refused to budge, they backed out. My lawyer had warned me that this could happen even before I accepted the job offer, right after he assured me that I would be on solid legal ground in taking the job. Admittedly, I didn't really think it would happen because why would they want to be known as the kind of company that does that? Even so, I've never regretted my decision to leave. As stressful as that was, staying would have been worse.

Huh. But the hiring firm didn’t sign the non-compete, so how does the first company go after the second?

They threaten them with a tortious interference lawsuit which is defined as "intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when one person intentionally damages someone else's contractual or business relationships with a third party causing economic harm"

This is the reason why employers ask if you've signed a non-complete

If the average person has nothing to worry about then why do all average people have to sign non-competes if they want the job? The fact is that companies see a benefit in threatening all new hires with non-competes, and like I said elsewhere, the only people with enough pull to negotiate out of a non-compete are those highly specialized non-average people who are the least likely to sign the boilerplate contract, who the company will still want to hire when they push back with specific demands.

So who are the non-competes really for then?

>So who are the non-competes really for then?

They're for assuaging the corporate leadership that they are actually effective at managing that pesky turnover problem they've been having in a manner that doesn't require them to increase pay or improve working conditions. That and people who carry a "book of business" (the sales team) and those with critical expertise in certain, niche knowledge domains.

I have heard of hiring companies dropping new hires because they had a non-compete. They didn't want to take the risk so the company that has the non-compete doesn't even have to do anything for it to have an effect.

Not true. A friend is a PA working in emergency medicine. Nobody will touch her with a 10 foot pole. She needs to commute almost two hours or change fields to get out of her non-compete.

There was also an issue that resulted in state legal action where fast food workers were blackballed due to non-competes.

Uh, I know of several low-mid level techies where their companies played hardball around their non-competes.

Exactly, for me personally, its silly to worry about this thing non-compete thing. Its a matter of risk assessment. I figure that its very unlikely to cause me trouble.