Professionals vs amateurs

Recently someone asked me if it’s better to build a team of professionals or amateurs

The professionals are expensive; they build their reputation over many years and they are proud of what they do. They will not compromise with the quality and will do the right thing.

The amateurs are future professionals, but they are not there yet. They might have the potential, but not the experience. Building a team with only professionals might slow the work for a project and drain the bank.

Building a team with only amateurs might cause a disaster in the long term, a lot of compromises and security issues.

Every professional was once an amateur and having junior people is a wonderful way to bring new ideas and energy into a project. Just don’t fool yourself that 10 people can do x amount of work, and 20 people can do x^2. It’s not always the case, especially if you cut the cost.

Professionals built Boeing planes, but they needed to cut costs. Now amateurs bring the costs high and the future of the company dim. Cutting costs might not be the right answer.

With the upcoming financial situation, we all need to decide between being surrounded by professionals or amateurs.

Aleks Vladimriov is a Senior Software Developer, recognized Project Manager and Soft-skilled trainer and a coach.

Aleks Vladimirov

Solution Engineering Manager at Thales | Senior IT Professional | Startup Mentor and Product Manager

Bio

Aleks is experienced Product Manager with an engineer background and over 10 years of experience as a software developer. He works with different governments and is responsible for negotiation features and requirements, understanding the customers’ needs and supporting the senior management with regular reports and analysis. He held various positions starting as a software developer, moving to a team leader and software architect.

He strives in waterfall and agile environment alike. He is certified Scrum Master and Prince2 Practitioner and he knows how to design business processes and help teams optimize their work.
During his tenure, he had to wear many hats, prioritizing business requirements, delegating work and mentoring team members, creating mockups with Balsamiq, providing MS Project plan to the senior management.

He had worked in many international teams, located in the same city or distributed in different countries and continents. He had been a team leader of cross functional international team of 8 people.

In his current position, he is very much client focused. He has excellent presentation skills.
He delivers training sessions on presentation skills and leadership and he had helped hundred of people to improve their presentation skills.

He is also interested in creating more positive changes in the workplace by using entrepreneurship skills.
He had won startup competition where his team had validated and develop a business idea from scratch.

In his free time, he writes in his blog about effective product development.