Further, unprofessional behaviour of certain kinds is genuinely bad. If you want an easy example see Mike Mearls and the Zak S situation. To recount briefly, Zak S was credibly accused by several women of sexually and otherwise abusing them. Zak S was listed as a playtester in the 5E core books, but otherwise had no apparent relationship to WotC. The "professional" response would have to have been to allow Legal, PR/marketing, and possibly HR (if he did have some kind of unknown relationship to WotC) to handle this. Mike Mearls did not take this option. He decided to get in there, and demand that the victims talk to him, so he in his magisterial capacity as lead D&D designer (!!!), could adjudge the merits of their claims. And it seems he "accidentally" sent all the details they provided him to Zak S. The "professional" or "rules-following" approach would have been better for literally everyone involved here.
Okay, I gotta push back on this, because it is not remotely what happened.
In the initial
2014 release of the PHB, RPGPundit and Zak S. were listed as consultants. At the time, Zak S had not been accused by anybody of sexual abuse. He was
at the time a well-known and ENnie-winning RPG writer. He was known for being abrasive online, and had been banned from several forums, and some people accused him of instigating online harassment of those who disagreed with him. But in response to positive reaction to trans and LGBT+ inclusive language in the PHB, some said WotC should not get credit for such language when they had used homo/transphobic people like RPGPundit and Zak S as consultants.
Mearls said that
"If anyone has any direct evidence of racism or sexism or any other form of discrimination on the part of people attached to D&D, please drop a line to me." It is not known what he did internally with such emails, whether he sent them to PR or HR (HR is unlikely, since Zak was not an employee of WotC), or anything. All we know is that he reported that people described harassment and marginalization, but he had not received evidence of Zak S using slurs:
"I haven’t seen or received any evidence that Zak has made homo/transphobic or racist statements. I have heard from a number of people who feel harassed and marginalized in the gaming community. At the end of the day, the responsibility for working with Zak and RPGPundit, and more importantly not directly working with marginalized groups falls solely upon me"
Zak portrayed this as exoneration, despite the fact that Mearls' response indicated it was unlikely that WotC would work with him again. Some people questioned whether Mearls had shared the emails he had received with Zak. Mearls said that he had not. One person said that the burner account they had used to contact Mearls was now receiving harassment. It was then widely assumed and repeated that Mearls had forwarded the emails to Zak.
In
2019, Zak's longtime girlfriend accused him of sexual and emotional abuse. WotC then immediately removed his name from new printings and digital versions of the PHB, and put out a statement saying it regretted ever working with him.
Whether one believes that Mearls forwarded emails or not, (I personally can conceive of various other possibilities) his inquiry was about discriminatory statements, not about online harassment, and certainly not about sexual abuse, which was not known by anyone until five years later. And inasmuch as, at the time, how WotC would address possible discriminatory statements (e.g., not work with him again and/or remove his name from the credits) was Mearls' call as the head of the D&D division, it certainly was not outside his rubric to review the claims against Zak of such statements.
www.enworld.org
Still, as a practical point on becoming employed... not the best idea. Those jerks also have a responsibility to their corporation and shareholders as well as their own rears 
. It does make hiring more difficult as well. Also, somebody who trashes one former employer, no matter how justified, may turn around and repeat the performance later.
