There are pretty draconian non-competes in the vein of you can&#x27;t do a similar job for anyone else for 2 years and there are ones that are less draconian.<p>When a company I was with was acquired, we were all given non-competes to sign and it was pretty clear we could sign them or leave. I left not much later for other reasons but I did sign the non-compete. Its terms were such that they seemed unlikely to affect me. (Basically they enjoined me from taking a senior executive position in a fairly narrow slice of the market for a limited period of time.) So, yes, under those specific circumstances, continuing to get paid seemed a reasonable decision.<p>[Edit: This was intended to be a reply to the comment asking why one would ever sign a non-compete.]