I agree with pretty much everyone else. For a non compete to be valid it has to be reasonable as to time and as to geography. In other words 2 years and 100 miles from the location of the business might be reasonable. To have an unpaid internship it must be educational in nature. I don’t know how you can have an educational experience and have a non compete at the same time. The clause in question is probably void as a matter of law
Any non-compete seems unreasonable for an unpaid internship. For a paid job, it would only be reasonable if the employer continued paying the former employee for as long as it wanted the former employee to abide by the non-compete.
The problem is that the OP is less likely to have the money to hire lawyers to fight the company in court if the company tries to enforce the 10 year non-compete. Even if the OP wins such a court battle, s/he is out the money spent on lawyers to fight it.
The vast majority of no-compete agreements are non-enforceable. Google your local state law to find out more. Practically every large company in my industry has non-competes, and they were never enforced except in egregious cases in which a high level employee left and tried to take a number of employees with him. Even then, the non-compete was tossed by the court and all of the employees were free to leave with no penalty.
If it is a good internship, sign the agreement and forget about it.
@ucbalumnus I generally agree with you except insofar as non-competes can only be enforceable if the company continues to pay you for the term of the non-compete. If I am working for a company and rising through the ranks, eventually I will have responsibility for accounts. After a certain point, those accounts remain clients because of me, not my company, so without a non-compete, nothing would stop me from striking out on my own and taking my clients with me. They could pay half of my billing rate from my company, and I’d earn double the salary. The non-compete prevents me from doing that.
When I left my first company, even after just four years of experience, my client basically offered to double my salary if I came and worked for them so that they could cut out my old company. Non-compete was a factor in my decision-making at that point!
In California, where non-competes for almost all employees are illegal (with no fuzzy boundaries that can take a court case to decide), they are not generally used, but it is common for employee agreements to include non-disclose and non-use of employer-proprietary information (including client lists), and specify that the departing employee cannot recruit other employees away from that employer.
https://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Pages/The-Economic-Effects-of-Non-compete-Agreements-.aspx describes some of the effects on non-compete agreements, including:
Thank you all for the insight and helpful comments. I spoke to my supervisor who spoke to some people higher up, and the non-compete clause was removed! I look forward to seeing what I can do at this company.