Seth Godin: What would a professional do?
Does your customer/client/employee actually believe that they haven't been shortchanged by your amateur performance? It is costing you in ways you're not measuring because you're willfully ignoring the consequences? Think of all the sub-pro experiences you've had as a customer, instances where someone was pretending to be a chef or a bartender or a computer jock but just came up short... Were you delighted? via
Really enjoyed this particular part of his entry today. While I will be the first to admit that I am continually learning, I stumble across many people at the ground level (think basic HTML 101) who are marketing themselves as 'web designers'. I watch them work hours to complete tasks that should literally take them minutes when done the right way. I see the outcome as something that is unmaintainable and unusable. Then I watch the cycle repeat time and time again. Time is money, in these instances. The amateurs spend hours of their time (business time), doing basic tasks. This cost is then passed on to the client. The client then pays more, and gets much less.
Design is not a strength of mine (gasp, you say, as you look at this finely crafted blog!). For client projects, I will seek out a professional designer. Someone who knows the great details of designing for the web. Someone who is a true professional. Sure, I could do it - but it would take twice as long and the results wouldn't come close to that of a professional designer. It's about working smarter, not harder. When it comes to a client on the other end, then it also becomes an ethical decision, in my opinion.
The truth of the matter is this will never end. There will always be amateurs out there (I say that in the nicest way possible), not knowing how to do things but are able to sell it. They often times equate quantity with quality. More output equals better. I tend to think the opposite. Find the right people to network with. Find the people passionate about what they do. Network with these people to help create quality products. More output is not necessarily better.