I'm gonna reduce that. Shareholders don't give a shit about working hours. They just care about revenue and expenses.

This is purely a management issue. Upper management might insist on these metrics as a way to crack down on productivity. In my personal experience as a dev, middle management doesn't give about metrics unless someone (upper management) forces them to. Because at the end of the day, its just a pain in the ass hounding subordinates about trivial shit if theyre actually performing where it matters. So anecdotally, I will say this seems to exclusively come from upper management. But I'm sure people have different experiences.

The problem is that upper management is usually so divorced from the real day to day problems that the easy win they can take to their superiors is stupid shit like apm metrics.

You are being far too generous to many of your colleagues. I assure you there are plenty of “peons” and lower/middle management playing teachers pet who enable this crap. I’m not saying you are strictly exception, but you are definitely not representative of a significant portion of leadership.