Back when I was building an X11 / Unix front end for a VLSI system, I got interested in how it worked, what it was doing. It took netlists and generated GDSII which is a file format describing layers of polygonal shapes. Corresponding to doping, metallization, polysilicon deposition masks.
I found a hardware text and read it. In the back there was a description of the GDSII file format.
I saw that this other huge software was being used to review the GDSII output, and it was quite slow. So over a weekend I wrote a fast dedicated viewer. It because quite popular in the company, I was told.
This is why its important to be interested in what you're doing, you'll see opportunities to be extra useful.
