First, "professional" and "amateur" should be defined to better make his point. Also, the examples are anecdotal.
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Professionalism is for Amateurs
11–20 of 34 posts
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#12At 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.
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#13Without 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.
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#14Professional: doing the same work many times with the same result. Amateur: comes from a French word meaning: "lover of".
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.
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#15Ham 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.
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#16The 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.
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#17Without 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…
Couldnt have said it any better. The opposite of professional is definitely not amateur. At least in this context.
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#18Sounds like the author is confusing professionalism with 'conventional wisdom'.
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Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#19Professionals do what they do for a living, amateurs don't.
"Professionals do what they do for a living..."
So do tradesmen.
Re: Professionalism is for Amateurs
#20This 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?