If you are good at something...

There is a famous dialogue in 'The Dark Knight' Movie that 'If you are good at something never do it for free'. Whenever I happen to hear this line it provokes me to think over it for a moment. I end up agreeing and disagreeing to it at the same time. Below are my thoughts on it:

In professional world, if you are good in some field and if your colleagues or friends need your expert help in that area, of course you should be sharing your knowledge and guide them well. If you feel you are good at something, you can go ahead and share your knowledge with right communities without expecting anything in return and without being asked for.

Now I will be relating this topic to a different situation in the IT job. If you feel you are doing additional manual work on a regular basis than what you are meant to do you should be bringing it to the notice of person whom you are reporting to. You should also provide relevant details of the additional activities being done. If tracked weekly, you will yourself know the increase in work volume. Leads/Supervisors should be taking care of analysing the increase in work volume on a regular basis by pulling out reports and graphs which gives a better visualization to ensure effort estimates are right and revisit estimates if required and also project to clients or customers for additional billing after evaluating it. In this case, I believe if we are good at something we needn't do it for free.

Also let's now take the case of an enterpreneur. He takes the risk of starting his own initiative with the confidence that he is good at it and he would have spent years of efforts in exploring himself. He would definitely require funds to raise it and I believe in this case, his efforts should be billed.

But in personal life, you should be happy to extend your help to others for what you are good at without expecting anything in return as long as you know that noone is exploiting or overusing your goodness. Remember there is someone in the world who always need your helping hand. You should help for free to those who really need your helping hand.

Would like to hear your thoughts on it..All thoughts and feedbacks are welcome..