Be Professional

On more universal value! Professional: good, Amateur: bad...

Isn't this strange? What is so positive in being professional?

Get paid for it (Larry Wall)

Sure: a touch of cynicism... This is balanced by Bruno Latour's: Amateur of Sciences, as others are Amateur of Art. Getting paid is a measure of the fact one could convince somebody else to grant you some measurable value... But it is not necessarily a competent opinion... Competent? You didn't understand, did you? What matters is not competent: it is PROFESSIONAL.

So, the person who decides to employ you is also a professional! This is a two-way service: you help the other to spend her company's money on you; and the more, the better: you are what you cost! You must be important if you spend a large budget.

Getting paid (I try myself too...) is an important guarantee of security: you can spend your time and effort on your job, once you feel safe.

There is however an obvious downside: people who master getting well paid, necessarily give up a noticeable part of their attention and time from what they would otherwise do.

A logical conclusion? Get rid of professionals, and instead, pay amateurs!

But this is not so logic a conclusion. It puts the activity, supposedly carried away, forward, at the expense of the process of carrying it. One may take the opposite viewpoint and consider that whatever you trade doesn't matter, as long as you trade. Now, there is no obvious choice anymore. The only remaining problem is: choose your camp!

-- MarcGirod - 05 Oct 2010