As you say, California companies have a ton of things they can pull on departing employees--especially if those employees did take IP or client lists out the door with them.

In addition, while signing non-competes and having them stringently enforced isn't quite a man bites dog situation in other states, it's very far from universal. Only time I had one was while I was briefly working for EMC (big non-compete advocate) who acquired the company I was working for. And, in that case, the non-compete only applied to becoming an executive of a storage vendor.

I wasn't aware of non-competes being a widespread thing in the MA computer industry at the time. The company I worked for was actually founded by an ex-DEC engineer. That said, I'm happy to see the current pushback. They definitely have a chilling effect on especially small firms hiring people because they're seen as a risk. The very small company I worked for over a number of years saw any non-compete as a hard pass.