> If you can't make the effort to spend a week cleaning up loose ends, document your projects, and pass on knowledge to the rest of the team, you are certainly not someone I want to work with in the future -- much less ever consider having as a co-founder. It's just basic professionalism.

Why would you accept the same case from a company? ("at will employment")

Why would I wanna work for free for a "for profit" company (or any organization for that matter that doesn't at least value my time I may spend with them to at least compensate for such labor to the extent I feel its worth), esp when they couldn't even give the time of day to ask for that stuff while one is still being compensated by them (or make a better offer than leaving cold turkey, "at will employment" remember)?

Fuck whatever kind of "professionalism" that is lol I'll keep it movin. Plenty of other people want to work with me :D

"If someone I work with quits day-of, and there's no obvious signs that it was over an ethical no-go, I'm going to conclude that it's someone I don't want to collaborate with in the future."

Here's the problem, you really don't know the whole situation and making such a determination without data will be problematic. You could be punishing the innocent party. Worse, your former fellow employee might use the same lack of information to conclude that you agreed with the company over perhaps their very valid reasons.

As an example, your fellow employee's health is declining (not obviously to you but that is quite common too), work is keeping them awake (devops is so fun), and then maybe their mother got cancer. A quick meeting and no hope of relief is given, and they quit. Farfetched? No, sadly. They know they can go somewhere that will understand, and where you are isn't it. They're hundreds of these things, and not one will be told to you honestly by an employer.

Years later they get back to a happy place, and you do your "don't want to collaborate". We're in an industry with a lot of introverted people so don't expect them to give some explanation for your approval.

Disrespect should be truly earned and not inferred, or as my Dad taught me: come by your hatreds honestly and with full knowledge of the why.

I just don't understand who is going to not give at least the appropriate amount of notice unless something adverse happened. Why are you assuming the worst of the people you work with? What does that say about you?

When I left my previous job I had documented, cleaned up and transitioned everything without anyone realizing I was doing so before I gave my two weeks notice. "Not giving a notice period" and "not tying up loose ends etc" are totally orthogonal concepts - it is equally possible to work out your two weeks notice and still leave your colleagues in a pile of incomprehensible crap.

It's a good point, but I disagree that it's more important. Especially since you probably don't really know the details of how your fellow employee was being treated by the company.

Is there any consideration that someone who leaves without notice should perhaps reflect upon the employer, and not only the employee?