There's not many sticks to emolpy unless you're unionised or otherwise have strong networking in the company.
Your biggest stick is actually flipping the table and doing something that seriously damages the company or puts it out of business. Comitting actual crimes like embezzlement, theft, or damaging company equipment for which you are not caught are also great sticks.
Of course, nobody likes to talk about that, they find it too high minded, but all to often that is what goes on behind closed doors. The root cause of it is a mal-formed, unfair compensation policy.
Classic example is Small business Sole Proprietorships where the ownership passes their purchases through the company and plays accounting games to hide profitability from their staff. The staff are always told "work harder to make the profits go up we'll reward you", nobody gets to see the balance sheet so the profit number they are given is fundementally hidden and there's no end of excuses as to why the business can't pay those market wages or big bonuses. Then one day the ownership sells, new ownership cleans house, and we repeat.
They'll negotiate just fine, make verbal promises, but at the end of the day there's a scam going on.
And when people feel scammed, then they do the aboved illegal\immoral crap and make the place a totally messed up place to work.
They can fire you, and they can delay advancement.
(Btw, you have an implicit stick about not working with as much motivation.)
Management is well aware of what might happen. Financial incentives, however, are aligned with keeping costs as low as possible. And you are seen as cost. Even when you bring money in.
That means unless you have an offer on the table, ability to waste time is a secondary consideration.
For the record, I agree about the ability to waste time. I don't agree with assessment that management does not get it. They just act in their own short term interest.
That's the equivalent of hitting myself and my employer, just hitting them a little harder.
If I'm lazing around, I'm bored and not progressing as a developer. I don't know if you've ever had a job where you do nothing or very little, but it's torture. Plus, you run the risk of getting sticked right back for underperforming.
While the company might give you what you ask for this one time, they will feel blackmalied and will see you as a flight risk, ready to leave for greener pastures at any moment anyway, so they'll prepare themselves by restricting your access to promotions, trainings and critical work so you don't pull that stunt again and slowly reduce its dependency on you and you could soon find yourself training your future replacements. It's all 101 in the HR handbook.
Try it, but only as long as you always have an exit planned.
This is a pretty reliable trope. I feel like I hear this every time someone mentions putting the screws to their employer. Yet I have yet to see it borne out by evidence.
It sounds scary. In practice I have never experienced it.
The reality is that institutional memory at most institutions is so fleeting that this above threat has never become an issue in practice.
Mind you in all cases I’ve always been prepared to walk, so that’s something to keep in mind, but I’ve never experienced worse treatment for leveraging what scraps I have. It’s pretty much been the opposite. Once I have that promotion by whatever means, magically I’m treated better. It has never failed.