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.
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.
Are you really comparing a "dog walker" to somebody who creates IP (nothing against dog walkers).
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.
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.