Amateur or Professional

Look for the etymology of each word. I’ll give you an overview here.

Amateur is someone who does things for love.

Professional is someone who does it for a living.

That’s it. Now whether you want to get an amateur or a professional is totally your choice. Each has its own pros and cons and it’s up to you to balance these with regards to your intention.

Let’s use the project management triangle. Rule is you can pick two and suffer one.

Amateurs have one attribute permanently embedded upon them. They are for sure cheap so if you pick them you have one side of the triangle and now you have to decide the last thing your project needs. You want it to be done as quickly as possible or as good as it can get. You cannot have both with the amateur. They will also reject anything they abhor doing. On the other hand they will beg to do something they love doing.

Professional on the other hand can be anything you want them to be so long as they get paid. You can actually buy these people as long as you let money speak. You can even fine tune their performance to the time table you set. Modify the compensation for the quality and schedule result. Either give more compensation or deduct some.

So in the long run, just look at your project and see what works for you.