Alert and notification option in job properties During SQL Agent Job configuration I see the options to define ALERT and NOTIFICATION.
I see that notification is what I'd expect, a notification of a job failure for example. 
But I do not understand the requirement to create a notification within the job configuration. For example there I can configure to notify me about general Sql Server events or the Memory Manager\Max Workspace Memory Counter to fall under a limit. 


  Are these general server health and performance monitoring options
  that are completely independant of the job I am actually configuring?


I am staring at the screen wondering whether I am just stupid or this is a design failure of Microsoft?
Magier -- The alerts are designed to allow you to capture and sent a notification for just about any condition that occurs on your SQL server. One common practice is to have the SQL agent looking for different fatal error severity levels that could be returned as a result of an error being raised from an executed command. Or for specific errors that are reported in the SQL logs that could indicate IO issues right up to database corruption. 

Brent Ozar has a write up about some of the common alerts that he recommends as part of their sp_blitz procedure. 

You could most certainly add many more if you don't have an additional monitoring service running to give you a heads up when something isn't within the range that you're expecting or warnings/errors are reported in the SQL logs.