[RangerScience]

Are you paid to write hard code, or are you paid to solve a problem? If solving that problem involves things that aren't challenging or "up to your skill level", will you still do them?

I'm a software developer. But, a few weeks ago, the Most Important Thing for me to do was get some art made and printed onto foam-core. Traditionally, that is not my job, and it doesn't match my skillset, but it needed to be done and I was the person best positioned to do it.

This is definitely situation-dependent. I work for the services part of our organization, where it is more important that you do what is needed than what you enjoy or are good at. However, for the pure engineering part of our organization, I want to hire you to do the thing you're good at and I don't expect you to do anything else.

So it depends. Do I need you to be excellent at a rigid set of things, or do I need you to be excellent at seeing something through to completion, whatever that means?

[mrkurt]

We need people to "be excellent at seeing something through to completion", among other things. That's one of the really nice parts about this process, getting one of these projects done on your own time just because you think it's important is a really good signal.