

Professionalism is for Amateurs - jrnkntl
http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/03/18/professionalism-is-for-amateurs/

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ekidd
Without defining "professionalism", this is a useless discussion.

Professionalism, to me, implies a certain standard of conduct: Delivering what
you promise, when you promise it. Communicating clearly. Refusing unethical
requests. Not flaking out at a critical moment. Keeping your cool even when
you're a bit frustrated. Refraining from conduct that will discredit your
employer, clients or partners. Being clear about your degree of expertise on a
given topic.

Now, this sort of professionalism isn't the _only_ virtue in life: You also
need to care passionately about what you do, speak plainly and honestly, and
enjoy building stuff. Professionalism is never enough. But the opposite of
"professional" isn't "amateur," it's "unprofessional." And I, for one, do not
enjoy working with unprofessional colleagues or clients.

~~~
helwr
The opposite of amateur is expert.

~~~
billswift
An amateur can be very expert. An amateur is someone who does something
because he wants to, for love of the work or subject. It has nothing to do
with expertise or competence at the job.

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grammaton
This whole thing is a strawman. The author sets up a false dichotomy - either
passionate amateur, or indifferent professional - and goes from there.

Here's a thought - how about someone who's a passionate professional?

~~~
rglover
"passionate professional" -- nailed it.

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edderly
Sounds like the author is confusing professionalism with 'conventional
wisdom'.

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arethuza
I never use the term "professional" in the context of computing - it pretty
much means nothing as far as I am concerned as to various people it can mean:

\- Wearing a suit, shirt and tie

\- Writing lots of documents that nobody reads

\- Having source control, automated build process and unit tests

\- Always saying yes to a customer

I also know quite a few "real" professionals (doctors, lawyers, professionally
qualified engineers) - using those standards I'm quite happy to state that I'm
_not_ a professional if anyone asks.

[Edit: Obviously I do think one of those points above is important!]

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kiubo
First, "professional" and "amateur" should be defined to better make his
point. Also, the examples are anecdotal.

~~~
praptak
_"First, "professional" and "amateur" should be defined to better make his
point."_

I think that the whole article _is_ the definition, if not explicit than at
least inferred from the examples. Not that I think that the only proper
definition of 'professional' is: boring, limited, uninspiring (the author
seems to suggest that).

On the contrary - there are some things that discern professional software
development from unorganized mess and I'd rather have them in place: source
control, automatic and repeatable build and deployment, regression tests etc.

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ThomPete
Professionals do what they do for a living, amateurs don't.

~~~
baha_man
"Professionals do what they do for a living..."

So do tradesmen.

~~~
ThomPete
How can you separate the two?

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nchlswu
At first glance, I can easily agree with "professionalism is for amateurs,"
but the explanation is severely lacking. There's confusion between acting and
behaving professional (professionalism) and being a professional (vs. an
amateur).

You can act and behave like a pro and maintain the personality that the
author's looking for. Being professional doesn't mean you're only subscribe to
the conventional thought processes big business types may subscribe to.

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gm
@jk215: This is junk. Did you consult your dictionary before you wrote this?
It makes it look like you do not know what you are talking about. Here is a
definition:

professional standards: the skill, competence, or character expected of a
member of a highly trained profession

use of professionals: the use of professionals instead of amateurs

Maybe you mean "beaureaucrats", or some other word; but not "professionals"

~~~
bioh42_2
He most definitely means bureaucrats, and I bet he owns a dictionary. But that
would have been a reasonable title, and not a link bait. And if it is not link
bait who will read it!

~~~
rhizome
Which is why I read the comments for linkbait-y titles before giving them the
clicks. I just wish HN made this possible to do from RSS.

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bpyne
The author is definitely conflating skill with original thinking. When talking
about professional vs. amateur it's about skill. The skill comes about through
experience and purposeful learning. If we take skill to be a spectrum from
high to low, the median for professionals is higher. (Of course, I'm strictly
using anecdotal evidence.) But, there are still unskilled professionals as
well as highly skilled amateurs.

Original thinking is a bit trickier to understand. Both examples in the post
use companies with vested interests in supporting their existing business
models. Having a vested interest tends to "color" views towards ideas that
disrupt the model. Of course, this provides opportunity for someone with at
least a moderate skill level and a lot of ambition to branch a market.

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kragen
Philip Greenspun's old article on professionalism, from 2000:
[http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-
history/professionalism-...](http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-
history/professionalism-for-software-engineers)

> Curious to know what his definition of software engineering
> _professionalism_ was after four years of MIT education, we probed a bit
> deeper and established that the way that he thought about professionalism
> did not differ from the thinking of a Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman: wear
> nice clothes, drive a clean car, and don't say anything that might offend
> anyone.

Philip may be hard to work with, but he's a great writer.

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nadam
Professionalism makes the difference between bad quality and reasonable
quality. For creating something amazing professionalism is not enough.
Following the rules just leads you to a certain level, after that you have to
break some of them.

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erikstarck
Professional: doing the same work many times with the same result.

Amateur: comes from a French word meaning: "lover of".

~~~
Typhon
Professional : comes from a french verb meaning, among other things, "to
teach".

Etymology's very deceptive. It's generally not a good idea to use it to
discover the "true" meaning of a word, whatever quality that "true" meaning
would have over the common acceptation.

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sausagefeet
I think what the author is really getting at is 'amateurs' tend to be people
who are in it for the love and excitement of what they do and 'professionals'
tend to see what they are doing just as a job.

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PaulHoule
Ham radio operators are "amateurs" but they're a lot more "professional" in
how they use two radios than the average person who uses 2-way radios for
their work.

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ujeezy
Reminds me of an old pg essay: <http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html>

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ratsbane
Loading that page required an absurd number of HTTP requests for the amount of
actual content.

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m1ck
Ambition is the last refuge of failure. or Professionalism is the last refuge
of the uninspired.

