Professionalism

2001-06-17

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What is professionalism? In tennis, professionals get paid, amateurs don't get paid. If an amateur win a prize, then he can't collect it. A race driver can collect the price, but he can't get sponsorship, which is to say he can't race since cars are very expensive. A chess player, on the other hand, can collect prize money, can get sponsorship. The only difference is that chess professionals have day job that is related to chess either as trainer, competitor, writer, or business person.

The question is, what's the difference between a professional web designer and an amateur web designer? There are as many answers to this question as professional web designer. Most will point out that a professional can do the work with extremely tight deadline and still produce good results. In other words, no writer's block or designer block is acceptable for a professional. Some will say that a professional know more, has more experience, skills, tools, and more refined techniques that amateurs. A few will say that the only difference is the pay scale. I think we can safely ignore that last one.

My opinion is that although the average professionals know more, and has more experience than the average amateur, some very talented amateur can still outshine the average professionals. As far as tools goes, the price for professional tools has come down drastically in the last few years, making them accessible to the average hobbyist. Instead of $500,000 digital studio 20 years ago, you can have $50,000 digital studio ten years ago. Now you can have $5,000 digital studio. And I predict that ten years from now, you can have it for $500, what with price of digital cameras and computers are still going cheaper and cheaper.

As for the designer block, let me put it this way: If you can't think creatively, then you're thinking by rote, or habit. If you're thinking by habit, then there is a good chance that what you're doing is just another application of standard templates. And if you do that, then, hey, any high school kid can do what you do, assuming he has access to a clip art library. In other words, you're charging professional fee for amateurish quality work. I don't think that's professional at all. On the other hand, a professional who drags on design probably won't stay professional for long, unless his final work is really spectacular or if he's independently wealthy.

As far as computer programmer field, a professional will write the tight, efficient code that is easy to read and understand. This puts Microsoft as the biggest amateur on the block, and rightly so. They do things by brute force and being rewarded with numerous bugs. Definitely unprofessional behavior. So is Netscape, by the way. Actually, so is most of the computer industry. I mean, what other industry can you think of can get away with disclaimer that if a computer program destroys the content of your hard drive, it's your own damn fault for installing it there, and not the programmers? Have you read any of the End User License Agreement (EULA) for your programs? No? I suggest you do. Every single big computer program companies has that disclaimer. Every single one! I don't think a professional would put that in. Scam artists, however, would. I mean, get real. If gun manufacturers can be sued for supplying guns with defective safety mechanism, why not computer programmers?

So what's my definition of a professional? Look at the quality of his work. If you take his work and mix it with a bunch of amateurs' work, people should be able to pick out the professional work, even if the same tools are used by everybody. Not every one can drive 300 yard golf ball drive, no matter which golf club you use. The same standard should be used with design work or any professional work. Any other indication is just confusing the issue.