The usual course of action in exploitative working conditions is collective bargaining. Instead, programmers got a consulting economy peddling the most insane interpersonal interactions because every social interaction must be individuated. Not wanting PMs hounding you for deadlines, crunch, and sane working conditions are all achievable through workplace democracy.
»Kent Beck tells the story of an early job in which he estimated a programming effort of six weeks for two people. After his manager reassigned the other programmer at the beginning of the project, he completed the project in twelve weeks—and felt terrible about himself! The boss—of course—harangued Kent about how slow he was throughout the second six weeks. Kent, somewhat despondent because he was such a "failure" as a programmer, finally realized that his original estimate of 6 weeks was extremely accurate—for 2 people—and that his "failure" was really the manager’s failure , indeed, the failure of the standard "fixed" process mindset that so frequently plagues our industry.«
Jim Coplien has also talked and written at not insignificant length about firing managers and flattening reporting structures as a part of implementing Scrum.
