In technical fields, scientists and development engineers are subject to NCAs, but so are quality engineers, technical writers, and UX people, to name a few, often because they work in the engineering part of the organization. However, non-engineers are not about to apply what they know about their last company’s products to those of the next one (e.g., because they don’t invent products or write code). Yet they often must sign the same NCEs as developers and scientists do, and this can inhibit their employability. There is no reason I can think of to put all classes of employes in the same NCA bucket, yet that’s what usually happens. Should non-engineers be exempt? I believe they should be, but I’m willing to hear counter-arguments.
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There are a lot of fields other than engineering where these agreements are used — from hairdressing to recruiting. IMHO, very overused and that is part of our concern. But we probably can’t write different rules for different roles and industries.