As a SW Engineer I have to say that this would not really work without some healthy dose of abuse. Mangers at one of my previous workplaces were very vocal wit

As a SW Engineer I have to say that this would not really work without some healthy dose of abuse. Mangers at one of my previous workplaces were very vocal with "everything is running with slacks" so whenever I gave them an estimate on how long a feature would take to implement or a bug to be fixed (bugfix estimates are BS to begin with but...) they took it and multiplied it by 0.75 at most. Then bitched about it when it was over the time they assigned. Guess what happened. Exactly this would happen with a cost-cutting incentive as well - if managers told us "reduce cost by 30% to the end of the year" then the cost would creep up to begin with. Incompetent management making stupid rules and stupid incentives is what drives me nuts :) . The devil really is in the detail: "you need to give the agent some of the incentive so their interests are aligned with yours". The vast majority of employers don't pay SW Engineers enough and don't incentivise them enough so they give a shit. This really has to be a company culture, not forced but lived especially by managers, then it would work with engineers as well.