It's absolutely fine for an exec to ask an employee to do "x" task, where there is value for the company, even if it is not in the employee's scope. This is a moot point, and I'm astonished we're even debating this. What has the world come to?
So, imagine I ask my developer or even my accountant on a one-off, rare occasion: "write me a critique of this new UX design". He replies "How dare you ask me about UX design!". What a strange answer.
Did you just compare asking if something looks good to having them write up an assessment of Russian political history?
Yeah I’ll go ahead and ask my dog walker to write me an analysis of the potential outcomes if Britain had joined against the US during the Trent affair. If they refuse I’ll fire them and write horrible reviews about them because obviously they don’t take their job seriously /s
You’ve got to be kidding or seriously biased here.
Is the dog walker an employee here? That makes a big difference. As does whether writing reports is a normal part of their job. If both of those things are true, asking them to spend a day researching some stuff and writing a report doesn't sound crazy.
You're also totally in your rights to ask your bank teller to write you an essay about Russian political history and switch banks if they refuse. Being within your rights doesn't mean you're not acting totally insane.
Why not? Suppose you have to choose between two dog walkers for hire, one who is will to write essays about Russian history and one who is not. You happen to be very interested in Russian history. Why wouldn't you prefer the dog walker who is willing to write about it?
> Are you really comparing a "dog walker" to somebody who creates IP
Yes. Why wouldn’t I? These are examples of people who were hired from completely different fields than what is requested of them in the scenario. Why would an AI researcher be a better Russian political history analyst than a dog walker? Neither is a polsci major.
Seems to imply a lack of business value, so you don’t have to be that astonished. No one reading this has enough information about whether the business value of that actually existed or not, but at that statement should explain to you why people are upset at this.
Secondly, the degree to which a task is close to the domain the employee was hired for also matters. For example, hiring a software engineer to do misc tasks like this clearly shows a lack of proper management. You either do it yourself as a manager or hire the headcount to get these kinds of misc tasks done. E.g. executive assistants/ secretary etc.
Asking someone for their opinion on UX design is very different from asking someone to prepare a brief on Russian history.
To me it starts to feel more like one person is asking another to do their job.
This person actually isn't your employer, your employer is the company, so if your manager starts to ask you to do tasks that should normally fall to them, they're asking you to do their job and taking the credit, that's neither good for the employer nor for you.
So, imagine I ask my developer or even my accountant on a one-off, rare occasion: "write me a critique of this new UX design". He replies "How dare you ask me about UX design!". What a strange answer.