First, the good news: not only did I get a recent “pay check”, but I was lucky enough to get some work starting last week. It was such a relief. As expected, I’d received a slew of calls from recruitment people – who apparently were sitting on their arses for the last three weeks, or were only interested in putting me in their databases – with actual roles, not even a day after the fact.

Today I’m going to talk about this weird thing called professionalism: what it means to be a “professional”. It’s weird to me because, I’ve heard the term being thrown around a lot, but we don’t seem to know what it actually means.

Let’s start with the dictionary definition of the word:

  1. following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.
  2. of, pertaining to, or connected with a profession: professional studies.
  3. appropriate to a profession: professional objectivity.

A professional – from my understanding of the definition – is someone who is known for, and makes a living from, their specialism in a particular field. If you think about the word professor, and the “rank” of professor, it suggests that a professional is qualified to teach their knowledge of their specialist area. Therefore, we should have the assumption that a professional knows what they’re doing. Another article that tackles the question also adds that there’s a level of authority that being a professional commands.

I’ve been in the web development circuit for almost seven years. I have no qualifications, awards or any kind of formal recognition in IT or web development (personally I think they’re bull****) – I’ve taught myself the basics from scratch, and have learned everything else while on the job – but I am known for getting things done and doing them incredibly well, sometimes more quickly than expected. But to my knowledge, I’ve never been thought of as a professional. Actually, I’ve often been called “unprofessional”.

What does it mean to be “unprofessional”? In my book, “unprofessionalism” means to not be of one’s profession. What springs to mind immediately is someone who isn’t qualified to do their particular job, or has no interest in doing their job [properly].
While I’ve said a lot about [clueless and bad] managers, bosses and recruitment people in the past, this also applies to a lot of people in IT at my level, be they web designers, developers, consultants, etc. Round them all up and use them for fuel, I say.

But there’s another aspect to professionalism: the third definition given by the dictionary, which could involve the way someone acts. To praraphrase: a professional gets the job done, when it has to be done, whether they feel like it or not. It’s got nothing to do with petty office politics or social hierarchy.

Most of the time, when I hear someone being called “unprofessional”, the intent is character assassination: to badmouth them to other people, with the intention of making them lose their job. What better way to get your own back on someone than to destroy their image, which, as we already know, most people are obsessed over.
Believe me, when I’ve been called “unprofessional”, that was certainly the intent – and unfortunately, as someone who doesn’t involve themselves with petty office politics and social hierarchy, I lose out.

That’s my half-baked take on this very vague thing called “professionalism”. I would really like you to come at me with your views and opinions. You probably won’t, though.