"Professional", RE: RE: CISSP Question

["David Gillett" <gillettdavid () fhda edu>]

  The CISSP code of ethics explicitly recognizes all of the qualities 
of a "profession", as described, except the official government
licensing stamp.  I believe there are those whose ambition is for
CISSP, or something like it, to achieve that legal status.

--

  Years ago, when I was still a rather young software developer, I
worked for a small company.  The company was owned by four partners:
three CPAs and a lawyer, and employed 2-3 additional CPAs in its
accounting practice.  But it also employed a dozen programmers and
analysts to support and maintain a vertical-market application that
had been designed to meet the needs of some specific accounting
clients and had gone on to further sales within their industry.
  One day, the lawyer called the head of the software group into 
his office, demanding to know why morale was so poor amongst the
software folks.  The software head diplomatically suggested that
the software folks didn't feel that they were treated as 
"professionals".
  IF the lawyer had responded by clarifying the legal status of
"professions", as Craig has done, the software head would have
been forced to try and find slightly less diplomatic phrasing...

  But, according to the version that quickly spread through the
office grapevine, the lawyer's answer was "You're not; PROFESSIONALS
make over $25K a year."
  (I did specify that this was some years back.)
  But I also had a pretty good sense of the market value of my 
skills, and knew that there was exactly ONE reason that I was
making less than $25K a year -- and that was WHO I was employed
by.  Which changed just as soon as I could arrange it....

  My point, I guess, is that even members of "professions" do not
exclusively use "professional" in the narrow "member of a legally
recognized profession" sense, or even in the broader "making a career 
of applying a commonly accepted body of knowledge and principles on 
behalf of principals" sense, and so it may be unreasonable to require
that everyone else use the term to express only these specific meanings.

David Gillett