I totally agree that we need continuing education, such as your analogy of the surgeon, but the article specifically mentions scenarios where the side-jobs are

I totally agree that we need continuing education, such as your analogy of the surgeon, but the article specifically mentions scenarios where the side-jobs are completely unrelated to the primary job. I've witnessed this myself, had a guy working on side-projects while on our dime. He was lucky not to get fired on the spot, because pretty much every employment agreement strictly prohibits working a 2nd paid job while you're using company resources whether that's time during the working day, or the company copier/internet, etc. If you're such a bigshot that you can negotiate the ability to work a 2nd job while on-the-clock for your day job, then more power to you, but I'm sure that's extremely rare. If you want to experiment with some new tech -- and you've been allocated the time for it by your superior(s) -- then by all means play around. But in my experience, there's typically at most only a few in each department whose formal role includes these types of projects, and they're always skunkworks-like projects that rapid prototyping or POC-like, and never a full implementation (unless you choose to go forward with it of course). This is the essence of R&D, which is there solely to make sure the business survives -- not you.