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in (software) it’s pretty much doctrine, they never hold up, sign em, ignore em, take whatever job you want.
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Again it depends. There are standards of reasonableness and consideration that have to be met — those depend on the State. Also, even if there are unreasonable/unlawful terms, many States follow a “red-pencil” rule which lets the presiding court strike out the offending terms (if any) and leave the rest of the NC in place.

I personally have seen data center IT/dev ops get sued when changing jobs to different data center providers. And an engineer working in a niche consulting field. The devops guy and his new employer decided to wait out his NC. And the engineer and the consulting company settled because we very aggressive and filed first in a more favorable forum than recited in the NC — but it took lawyering which costs money.

The companies that I have seen go after their ex-employees are small companies with vengeful/spiteful owners. Bigger companies wont bother unless the departing employee is a real big deal. Medical clinics/providers are also big on suing MDs that try to break NCs. Though, I haven’t had personal experience with one of those just read a lot of case law.

Though some of the abuses of NCs this rule is directed to are when low wage employees at restaurants, hair salons, or the like, are bullied with NCs. Those employees cannot afford lawyers. In several states this type of NC abuse is unlawful but not all.