I've certainly seen this in past jobs. They advertise for smart, creative people and that's what they get. The job is to maintain some awful 5-year-old web app, changing fonts and twiddling fields around to please an internal customer.

I read a great quote once to the effect that a scalpel isn't better than a bread knife, it's just a different knife, for a different job. Don't hire a scalpel to cut bread.