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Fine, fine, I'll post the screed. My point is that the word "professional" is now all but synonymous with "slick salesman" Personally, I doubt that "professio

by lsc 14y ago

Fine, fine, I'll post the screed. My point is that the word "professional" is now all but synonymous with "slick salesman" Personally, I doubt that "professionals" were any more trustworthy before I was old enough to notice, too... thus me poking fun at the very ideas underpinning it. (as an aside, I don't know all that much about finance... but as far as I can tell, it's nothing but sales, so there really isn't any room for professionalism in the way you mean the word. They aren't doing anything but selling.) My experience with people that claim to be 'professional' or who attempt to dress professionally - nearly all of those people I know are salespeople. If you want someone to show up on time and look good? sure, go with one of them. If you want the correct answers to your questions? if you want someone to give you truthful answers even when those truthful answers mean you go with a competitor? find someone who is actually into what you are trying to do. That's the thing, at least in the part of Engineering where I work? sure, some good Engineers claim to be professionals, but almost none of them put any effort into the appearances of professionalism. Few put any effort into dressing or grooming, and many are habitually late. The only people I know that put a lot of effort into appearing professional are the sales people. I mean, sure, you and I can argue back and forth all day... "Words have meaning!" and, of course, a 'professional' is someone that does a job that requires a lot of training, and probably comes from an upper middle class background. But the thing is, that meaning changes over time, as how the word is used. Personally, I associate the word 'professional' along with the western style business suit, with fraud, mostly because the Engineers I know don't put much effort into claiming to be professional, while most sales people do. I think that more and more people have that opinion of the suit; even salespeople I meet rarely wear suits, (though, of course, they still loudly declare they are 'professionals' even though they have little knowledge of the product and are more than happy to make up ridiculous lies about their own product and the competition.)

yuhong 14y ago
Yea, I will refer you to this post that describes the fundamental flaws: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3426201 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3426201
billswift 14y ago
"Professional always means power." Frank Herbert Most specifically, the power to exclude competition, that is the sole real purpose of "professional licensing", whether medical, legal, engineering, or other. The "protecting the public" is fraudulent window dressing to impress the suckers.
- forensic 14y ago
  Overly cynical. If doctors did not have a professional association their conduct would likely get worse, so there is a public interest being served when professions self-regulate for quality. There is also an anti-competitive factor, but corporate oligopolies do the exact same thing. Libertarians criticize professional bodies and unions while giving monopolies, oligopolies, and regulatory capture a free pass. This is plain stupid because it is those corporate monopolies that are stifling human progress, not the relatively powerless unions whether they're the white collar "association" variety or the blue collar "union" variety.
- rayiner 14y ago
  You're presupposing that the costs of decreased competition outweigh the benefits of regulation. I have yet to see convincing evidence in support of this proposition.
forensic 14y ago
Your point, in short: non-professionals work really hard to present themselves as professionals, to the extent that actual professionals now shun the word. The word has a strict technical definition, however, and that definition is all about trust. What makes a professional unique is that they are ethically and legally bound to do their best for the client. If they fail, they can be held responsible. Stricter regulation over the word is obviously needed, because non-professionals have appropriated it.
- lsc 14y ago
  >Your point, in short: non-professionals work really hard to present themselves as professionals, to the extent that actual professionals now shun the word. Sure, you could put it that way. But being as I shun the word, I'm certainly not going to go about calling myself a professional. If you have the spare time to try to change the popular usage of a word, have fun. Sounds like a waste of time to me. Even if you succeed... well, salesmen are professionals; they'll find a way to adapt, just as they are adapting to the decline of formal dress and manners. Meh, even as 'professionalism' has been defined during my lifetime, there are some positive aspects of the slick salesman. He is always on time, and always dresses presentably. He always gets you his bill on time. She knows how the system works to get in to the 'approved vendor' lists, and He knows who needs to get a kickback and how much of a kickback can be given without anyone getting in trouble. In some cases, that sort of thing is important. I know none of those things, and can't even properly accept a kickback of the generally accepted amount. Oh man. I remember I was evaluating hardware for a client... the vendor took us all out to lunch and was handing out, you know, low dollar kickbacks. When he heard I was the tech doing the evaluation he gave me fifty bucks in gift cards. Right in front of the client, too. (there was a company policy about gifts, and apparently fifty bucks was the limit.) I was flabbergasted. I had no idea what to say. Everyone else thought it was completely acceptable, and the person I considered my customer was right there and approved so I didn't make a scene or anything, but yeah. I was shocked. I mean, yeah, sometimes you are in a place where that sort of thing is just how it's done. And you really don't want me when that is what you need, because even if I was to stoop to that sort of thing, I'd fuck it up. It's more complicated than handing someone an envelope of cash. You want a Professional to handle that sort of thing.

by lsc 14y ago

yuhong 14y ago

Yea, I will refer you to this post that describes the fundamental flaws: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3426201 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3426201

billswift 14y ago

"Professional always means power." Frank Herbert Most specifically, the power to exclude competition, that is the sole real purpose of "professional licensing", whether medical, legal, engineering, or other. The "protecting the public" is fraudulent window dressing to impress the suckers.

forensic 14y ago
Overly cynical. If doctors did not have a professional association their conduct would likely get worse, so there is a public interest being served when professions self-regulate for quality. There is also an anti-competitive factor, but corporate oligopolies do the exact same thing. Libertarians criticize professional bodies and unions while giving monopolies, oligopolies, and regulatory capture a free pass. This is plain stupid because it is those corporate monopolies that are stifling human progress, not the relatively powerless unions whether they're the white collar "association" variety or the blue collar "union" variety.
rayiner 14y ago
You're presupposing that the costs of decreased competition outweigh the benefits of regulation. I have yet to see convincing evidence in support of this proposition.

forensic 14y ago

Your point, in short: non-professionals work really hard to present themselves as professionals, to the extent that actual professionals now shun the word. The word has a strict technical definition, however, and that definition is all about trust. What makes a professional unique is that they are ethically and legally bound to do their best for the client. If they fail, they can be held responsible. Stricter regulation over the word is obviously needed, because non-professionals have appropriated it.

lsc 14y ago
>Your point, in short: non-professionals work really hard to present themselves as professionals, to the extent that actual professionals now shun the word. Sure, you could put it that way. But being as I shun the word, I'm certainly not going to go about calling myself a professional. If you have the spare time to try to change the popular usage of a word, have fun. Sounds like a waste of time to me. Even if you succeed... well, salesmen are professionals; they'll find a way to adapt, just as they are adapting to the decline of formal dress and manners. Meh, even as 'professionalism' has been defined during my lifetime, there are some positive aspects of the slick salesman. He is always on time, and always dresses presentably. He always gets you his bill on time. She knows how the system works to get in to the 'approved vendor' lists, and He knows who needs to get a kickback and how much of a kickback can be given without anyone getting in trouble. In some cases, that sort of thing is important. I know none of those things, and can't even properly accept a kickback of the generally accepted amount. Oh man. I remember I was evaluating hardware for a client... the vendor took us all out to lunch and was handing out, you know, low dollar kickbacks. When he heard I was the tech doing the evaluation he gave me fifty bucks in gift cards. Right in front of the client, too. (there was a company policy about gifts, and apparently fifty bucks was the limit.) I was flabbergasted. I had no idea what to say. Everyone else thought it was completely acceptable, and the person I considered my customer was right there and approved so I didn't make a scene or anything, but yeah. I was shocked. I mean, yeah, sometimes you are in a place where that sort of thing is just how it's done. And you really don't want me when that is what you need, because even if I was to stoop to that sort of thing, I'd fuck it up. It's more complicated than handing someone an envelope of cash. You want a Professional to handle that sort of thing.