How do you deal with anti-competitive clauses in contracts with your employer?
I have found them to be unavoidable here in the field of IT/CS related fields, and I don't want that to affect my future career as much.

My current strategy is to gain more of other skills than just in software development, so I can fall back on those skills for a different field (e.g. DevOps, sysadmin, ...) instead of being unemployed for a year because I didn't like my workplace anymore.

The only other way I can think of would be to open my own company, but I'm not going to be ready to do that right after school.

Any other thoughts?

@11000100111000 Having read my contract, it is.

@11000100111000 That clause is very common though. It doesn't currently limit me (as there's going to be a one year period before my next job anyway... still goin to school, duh), but it might in the future.

A few of things to keep in mind is that this clause intends to prevent your new employer, or your own new business from gaining confidential information, trade secrets, client list.

So if you are a software engineer, unless their is some sort of proprietary technology which could be used in the new business, there won’t be a problem.

Secondly if they are serious, they need to take you to court and the court decides if their length of non-compete, geographical distance or the concept of it is legal.

Lastly this changes from country to country, but I think under English common law, this clause is not reinforceable. A lot of the time it’s just added to as a “scare” tactic