Hmm. None of the major software companies around here track time. I know that it’s common at enterprise software shops where you are billing hours against CLINs and things like that. But it’s definitely not at all common at SaaS companies to track time.

Mine was a pretty big player and we had to track times like crazy (two separate systems and a third opaque one, plus I did one for myself to cover my ass).

But it really depends on the company, I worked in both scenarios. Sometimes I can't broker a better deal or find a better company and again, a good team or an exciting project may make up for dickhead management and their paranoid lack of trust.

I only worked for one company where I billed hours against CLINs, but I still had to track hours everywhere.

("Enterprise" and "charging CLINs" are hardly the same thing)