I work in an automotive company (one of the big three's) I specialize in Noise and Vibrations. My job description involves testing, analyzing, and solving problems. Everyone I work with has very little to no programming experience (edit - programming is not a part of my job description). We* deal with huge amount of data (coming from sensors and microphones) I like to build custom tools (write software to process the data) so when I am really solving problems, I am spending very little time/effort in data processing and more on analyzing. (edit - a lot of people dont appreciate the things I do, they like to spend hours on running calculations using a standard software that we have, I see this as waste of time since it can be and should be automated)

In this case, their free time breeds free time (barring an employer issuing more work). The logic works in some situations.