General employees have minimal bargaining power, and while they may have knowledge of, or even be responsible for generating IP - overall they're not seen quite as important as senior executives who have knowledge of longer term plans.
Those senior executives may also have better bargaining power - so for instance they might accept a 2 year non-compete for the industry, but in return get a sizable payout upon departure to compensate for that.
It's basically to stop your C-Suites of FooCorp going to work for their direct competitor BarCorp and having direct internal knowledge of how you'd take down FooCorp.
My understanding of it:
General employees have minimal bargaining power, and while they may have knowledge of, or even be responsible for generating IP - overall they're not seen quite as important as senior executives who have knowledge of longer term plans.
Those senior executives may also have better bargaining power - so for instance they might accept a 2 year non-compete for the industry, but in return get a sizable payout upon departure to compensate for that.
It's basically to stop your C-Suites of FooCorp going to work for their direct competitor BarCorp and having direct internal knowledge of how you'd take down FooCorp.