[commandlinefan]

> their work is worthless

So, I'm old enough to remember a time before widespread open source and even before the world-wide-web itself. I was paid to work on whatever my employer thought they could sell, but not necessarily what I was interested in learning more about. When Linux came out, for example, I thought that going through it and maybe even working on it would be a great way to learn more about operating systems in a way that I would never get a chance to do professionally. Being curious about something isn't necessarily declaring it "worthless".

That said, I agree with the author that it's scummy to demand it of employees (although I've never seen that myself).