[chrisbennet]

How about "If we ship on time, everyone will get a raise to match market!"

Seriously though, good developers want to perform their best. You want to make developers happy? Let them ship code they are proud of. They are not idiots, letting them take Friday afternoon off to "reward" them for working on the weekend is kind of insulting.

Consider this: Are "productivity" metrics like hours in the office, lines of code, # bugs fixed, etc. something that actually helps ship code or are they done so managers have something to put in their spreadsheets?

Do managers think that developers can somehow tricked into being more productive?

I've been lucky to have great managers. They acted more like "target designators" [you know, the laser that guides bombs to the target] and less like commanders.