My last company sued at least two former employees that I know about. The thing with non competes isn't that the company makes money back by suing. It's more worth it for them to file suit if the executive's pride is hurt or if they want to send a message to other employees.

I have. A guy was an electronics sales account manager at a previous job. He came to work for us as an IT services sales manager. Two or three months in, the previous employer called us and said his noncompete covered everything related to technology (or maybe just a combination of sales and technology), so he left.

Healthcare, specifically providers, are extremely hampered by these. Imagine working at a hospital in a big city and you must sign a noncompete that blocks you from working at any other hospital system within 50 miles. If you're a specialist, it's worse than that because you can't exactly flex into another role easily.

The last noncompete I signed, I wrote in the margins, in pen, that I was allowed to do anything I wanted so long as it didn't directly harm the interests of the company I was leaving. They signed it.

They have been used in incredibly generic jobs like fast food restaurants

At least in mine, short of something along the lines of corporate espionage or insider trading

Normally that would be covered by something like an NDA or Non-Solicitation, rather than a Non-comp - or even just federal law for something like insider trading.

It's true though, Non-comps are usually unfair and unnecessary and overly restrictive.