It is not at all required for engineers to be acting rationally, let alone for them to be the only ones acting rationally, for workers—of any type—to have a better understanding of what will let them get a good job done for the company than upper management.

This is especially true in large corporations, where upper management is very insulated from the realities of line-level work. It is also especially true in most publicly-traded corporations, where upper management is almost invariably going to care more about the trendline in the company's stock price than in their actual productivity, or even in the well-being of their workers.