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Comment by atirip | Hacker News Reader

Put him in uncomfortable situation and tell him to do something you expect he really loathes, something what just sometimes "needs to be done, no matter what". If he balks or talks too much, he's not a professional. Example? Give photographer a video camera and say you have an vision of some cheesy shot (look at clientsfromhell.net for ideas) and see what get's delivered.

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I'm not sure who is more of a professional, the web developer who gives the client their requested BLINK tags and Comic Sans, or the one who tries to dissuade the client and avoids work from similar clients.

Easy answer - one who tries to dissuade the client. A professional will not always do what is asked, but that doesn't mean they don't do what is right.

There are two senses of the word "professional" here. Some people are professional like doctors or engineers. They will not always do exactly what is asked of them, because there are real-world consequences. Sometimes they will educate the client instead. Some people are "professional" like prostitutes. They will pretty much do anything enthusiastically, so long as they are paid.

More value is created by the first sense of the word, IMO.

It depends. What I have learned is that every professional can and will give advice and derail bad developments. This is not a problem at all. The problem is that sometimes you absolutely need to do something and then you need somebody who understands you and just does. On most cases the world is grey, there is no wrong, no right. What I described in my previous posting is just a test, can he walk the walk.

BTW. I have to ask, is "BLINK tags and Comic Sans" wrong on every occasion, on every target group, on every situation, on every web page, absolutely no matter what? Because if you agree that there can be one in a billion situation where "BLINK tags and Comic Sans" are acceptable or even good thing to do, then ... you are not professional :-)

> On most cases the world is grey,

No, the world only _looks_ grey. In a given situation there really is a right thing to do, and wrong thing. The details matter immensely, however, causing white and black to be right next to each other, and intermixed thoroughly. This leaves it very hard to tell what is the right thing to do, leading to moral dithering and apparently grey morality.

(I'm not really being serious. But I'm also not really being entirely unserious.)

Huh. I wonder what about this provoked the downvotes (net 2 at this point). I'm actually curious, not just trying to whine about karma, and would like to hear about people's moral intuition that clash with mine.

It really is my experience that small details about a situation can turn my opinion of an action from totally justified to totally unjustified, or vice-versa. I wouldn't have expected it to be controversial that details can matter greatly, making judging many situations quite difficult either looking from the supposedly objective outside, or from the definitely subjective people on one side or another.

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