Ethically, should I disclose why I track “Hours Worked”?

Question

A senior leader at my company recently demanded that all engineers log the number of hours worked for every engineering ticket, stating that the data would be used for software capitalization. I have inside information that the data will actually be used to measure that engineers are spending 85% of their time on "real work."Ethically, should I tell the engineering managers the real reason why this "Hours Worked" metric is being tracked?

JohnFen · Accepted Answer

I don't think it matters. The reason your company stated for doing this is transparently bogus, so pretty much everyone will probably assume the real reason is to help determine which staff members are going to be laid off.