I have worked long. And I can think of many, many examples of people quitting suddenly and leaving everything hanging, in companies of various sizes.
These days I run a solo business. I do not want to have any employees. I've been burned too many times in the past — and my experience (generalizing horribly) is that most programmers think they are the cream of the crop, superstars that deserve salary, benefits, perks, bonuses, vacations, and fantastic treatment. But then it turns out that a) they don't perform as superstars, and b) the company deserves absolutely nothing in return, so people leave suddenly and without warning.
In the businesses I've seen, the relationship was very asymmetric, heavily biased towards the comfort of employees.
Entitled people exist in all areas, that's a fact.
But you are being too weird in your generalization that usually the table is tilted in favor of the employees. For 22 years of career I've never once seen it.
If you make yourself a niche consultant and can command insane fees then nice, but for everybody else they are just cogs that can and are replaced on a whim.
These days I run a solo business. I do not want to have any employees. I've been burned too many times in the past — and my experience (generalizing horribly) is that most programmers think they are the cream of the crop, superstars that deserve salary, benefits, perks, bonuses, vacations, and fantastic treatment. But then it turns out that a) they don't perform as superstars, and b) the company deserves absolutely nothing in return, so people leave suddenly and without warning.
In the businesses I've seen, the relationship was very asymmetric, heavily biased towards the comfort of employees.