A friend, who works in the same company (but for a different team) has an abusive team lead.. She's been constantly pressured about the amount of work she's doing, even though she pulled 12+ hours a day for the past week or so.. With the commute, that makes it 16 hours or more per work day..
One day, she sounded really upset about things, so I told her to finish up what she can, go home and sleep a normal 8 hours and then come back the next day.. Unfortunately, on her way home, she gets this call from the team lead saying "I thought you were only going out for a while, get back into office, we got a deadline, yadda yadda yadda"..
When I heard, my first instinct would have been to tell the team lead to stuff it (were I her).. :) She didnt react much better, I think.. but is there anything else that could have been done ? I wonder...Unsurprisingly, when she went back the next day, not only was she able to work better (or so I was told), but she actually got less flak too (which sorta confirms that the team lead was simply on a power trip, IMO). Unfortunately, there is no oversight and she and an intern are the only ppl on the team..
Trying to get myself into the morass of standards and confusing jargon that make up web services.. not a happy task. 3-4 solid hours of reading sundry specs from W3C last night left me more confused than when I started.. I am suffering from a bad case of "buzzword-itis" :D
Interesting story at Salon about over-the-top job descriptions..
Were I in your position, I wouldn't go after the project leader directly.
