California is just ahead of the game, as they are in a lot of different ways. Non-competes are, and I’m paraphrasing a lawyer friend here since I’m not one, functionally dead in the water. They’re generally honored because no one wants to hash it out in court for months that they could be relaxing or transitioning to the new job anyway. A surgeon I knew left a clinic to start his own, and told his clients to just contact him in six months, not because he cared about the non-compete he had signed, but because it was going to take him about that long to set up the new clinic and hire staff.