It depends on how junior the engineer is. My first job out of college, I was asked to write some code to cheat a benchmark, basically detect when a particular benchmark program was running and only then put the software into an alternate "fast path" that would result in better benchmark results. I agonized over this and didn't want to refuse. This was my first real job as a professional developer, and I didn't want to make waves. Eventually I got the nerve to tell my boss I was uncomfortable with the assignment, and he said "Oh, no problem at all! We keep our devs happy here." and assigned me onto another task. Joe, three cubicles down was more than happy to write the benchmark-cheating code.