One warning with this kind of behavior is that it doesn't actually insulate you from the insanity of the environment. Some of your cool stuff is going to be buried because people don't understand it and won't buy in, or because it obsoletes something they did, etc... People will complain about you "not being a team player" when you do things they don't expect. Some managers simply can't handle employees like this and will try their hardest to muzzle you lest you say something embarassing. I've seen all of the above, even at small environments where you wouldn't expect it.
This is why I have to wonder how old the parent is. When you're young and have lots to learn, sure, take on a lot and learn.
But as I've become older I've decided I'm not interested in putting in the extra time just to make my boss wealthier. Time is my greatest asset and I need to manage it with predictability. Time I spend making somebody else wealthier when I could be spending that time making my own business profitable is time wasted. I'm the one spending my time learning and building the application - that is to say, I'm taking the risk - so I should get the reward.
Performance reviews and bonuses are far too politically fragile and opaque for me, and the fact is unless you're a shareholder, you're guaranteed to never receive more than a small fraction of the true value of your work when you're working for someone else.
That's why I quit permanent work and have moved into contracting: I earn good money that I'm saving towards my own startup, I get paid for every hour I work, and as a matter of personal discipline if I'm not doing paid work I spend the free hours working on my own projects that - in the long run - should pay off far better than the contracting or permanent work ever will.
That being said, this strategy only makes sense if you believe you can generate substantially more money working for yourself than somebody else could pay you. If you don't believe in yourself you're stuffed.
Have another look at edw519's second point (emphasis added):
> 2. You'll probably have to make time for extra work. Shouldn't be a problem if you're a good programmer in an enterprise.
The point being that you can do these things on company time if you complete your day-to-day tasks efficiently.
Your points are more valid if you substitute 'energy' for 'time' in your reply. If you spend eight hours completely zoned in while working for the man, you might not have much energy left for your personal projects when you get home. You can mitigate this somewhat by working on your personal projects before work.
Or you can take the Einsteinian approach and not sweat your day job while you revolutionize physics in your spare time.
I've never found that to be true. People love stuff being done a lot more than they hate looking bad. Managers at big companies know it costs almost as much as a programmer's salary to find a new programmer, so if the only problem that you're causing is doing extra useful work, they are not going to make it a priority to fire you and find someone else who will do what they're told. In fact, managers are often so overextended that a self-managing employee that's visible to the rest of the organization is an asset.
(This worked for me when I was at BofA. I worked on a tiny team that nobody cared about, but people pretty high up knew who I was. This was generally good for my manager and her bosses. The impression I got was when I was on a conference call, I was the only person who ever wrote code to solve problems, and people seemed almost grateful for that. I didn't really enjoy this, and there was a lot of red tape and bullshit, but I do know people who do fine with this kind of job. YMMV.)
