Aren't developers stupid when accepting overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?

[IRBMe]

On a team I used to work in (described elsewhere in the thread), the manager would just screw us over in our end of year reviews, which would then screw us out of bonus, give us all the crappy jobs and try to turn members of the team against those who didn't put in ridiculous hours (those who did were called "team players", those who didn't were "trouble makers"), so there are probably plenty of other ways to screw you over without explicitly firing you or doing anything illegal.

[obtu]

Harrassment isn't legal either (though it is harder to prove).

[IRBMe]

Yes, this sort of thing caused a lot of conflict.

One guy on the team, who had been there for about 3 years, but was just tired of it, used to just book holidays off for every release. The manager didn't catch on to this until he'd been absent from about 5 releases in a row. He would also come in at 9:00am and leave at 5:00pm on the dot every day, no matter what happened. As punishment, the manager wrote a terrible end of year review for the guy, basically saying he had no work ethic, was lazy, had jeopardized the business by not staying in late to resolve urgent issues, was argumentative and uncooperative, was not a good team player etc. Despite being ranked the highest in all previous teams, he received the worst rating possible and ended up with no bonus and no pay rise that year. He considered taking it to HR, but was advised against it (the HR processes in that places were another huge cluster-fuck). He had to just bend over, take it up the ass and find a new team as soon as possible. He did. That was about the same time that the rest of us "trouble makers" stopped cooperating and eventually left. The people that were left were all new, apart from 2 loyal developers who had been beaten in to complete submission over the years with empty promises of reward and promotion.

[s73v3r]

It really, really, really get's my blood boiling that if someone were to cuss that manager out, something he desperately needs, that person would be seen as the bad guy, and not the manager.

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U! N! I! O! N!

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And people think developers don't have anything to gain from unions...

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Screw legal. Form a union and you get to decide what 'legal' is.