[ForHackernews]

They can quit. I promise you as a manager I spend at least half my time trying to keep developers happy and engaged because losing even one of them will cost the team way, way more in productivity than indulging somebody who wants to implement a perhaps-overengineered solution.

I don't know how it is everywhere, but in my neck of the woods good developers are hard to recruit and expensive to lose - they have a lot of leverage and they know it.

[halfmatthalfcat]

I've met devs who don't have the self-confidence to leave their current job under a terrible manager because they don't want to go through the equally terrible interview loops. They're stuck in some kind of purgatory.