The New York Times ran an overview piece on restrictive covenants this past weekend that provides an interesting read.  The piece is not focused on journalists and really only touches on the legal arguments at play, but does a great job of describing how these covenants limit an employee’s power to grow his income.

By giving companies huge power to dictate where and for whom their employees can work next, noncompetes take a person’s greatest professional assets — years of hard work and earned skills — and turn them into a liability.

“It’s one thing to have a bump in the road and be in between jobs for a little while; it’s another thing to be prevented from doing the only thing you know how to do,” said Max Burton Wahrhaftig, an arborist in Doylestown, Pa., who in 2013 was threatened by his former employer after leaving for a better-paying job with a rival tree service. He was able to avoid a full-blown lawsuit.

Click here to read the article.