In 2013, Ed Pileggi left a software engineering role in San Diego for a lucrative consulting position with Hawaiian Airlines in Honolulu. With the new opportunity came a higher salary and a chance for professional development.

What Mr Pileggi did not realise was that, in signing a contract with the third-party staffing agency that secured him the job, he had agreed to a “non-compete clause” that would effectively prevent him from taking any other software development work on the island. The clause applied not only for the term of the contract but for up to a year after it ended.

Such a clause meant little to him as a former resident of California, where non-competes are not recognised under state law. “I signed the contract coming from California, and I didn’t think twice,” Mr Pileggi says.