People telling you that you're unprofessional can mean that you're the one making work suck for them.

I read the point that being "professional" is also about being able to do good programming work and take responsibility for what you do technically - not just appearing at the office at the right time, being courteous to other people and accepting HR buzzwords and policies and opinions without question.

Appearing at the office at the right time is unnecessary just for appearance's sake, but can be a factor in respecting and empathizing with coworkers, for example to be available for questions. It is usually not that important in the grand scheme of things.

This can be as subjective as the word professionalism. People always use their own value judgement in these things - whether it's deciding if something is professional, or not, or if something is respectful, or not.

Sometimes, you do have to just follow rules, for the sake of it, because there is no standard in personal value.

It doesn't matter if you get your work done. There are a hundred other people who can get your work done and do it without being a dick.

Note: I'm not calling _you_ a dick. I just vehemently disagree with anyone who thinks they get to be a dick (or, more generally, act however they please) just because, to borrow terminology from earlier comments, they're "talented".

If you want to pin down a concept, you can't just deal with easily categorised instances - the real distinctions exist in the grey areas.

There's a multi-dimensional gradient between polite and impolite, and where the thresholds lie is determined by personal value. Pick points far enough to either side, and most of those thresholds will fall within - but it is in the "grey area" that they disagree. That is why an arbitrary, but unambiguous threshold is needed as a standard.

However, those are all things that I've personally seen these so-called "talented" individuals do, because they think their talent makes them immune from criticism. And, sure, that's just my own, anecdotal experience, but the very fact that it's also a widely-held stereotype of these types of people, I would wager that I'm not alone in having been confronted with these types of people.

This isn't a gray area. This is the basic idea of being professional, and it holds true between places where a suit and tie is mandatory and places where you can bring your dog to work every day.

And to be absolutely clear, this is a very Western-centric view. I simply _don't know_ enough to comment on how this applies to more Eastern work environments.

This are unambiguous when you are interacting with people before you have established your own norms. It's possible for a healthy team to have a dynamic where cursing out bad code is completely acceptable, while cursing a person is not. The camaraderie built around breaking a social norm (cursing) can offset shock at violating the norm. However, that should change or be re-evaluated every time that norm is disturbed.

It's also possible to go 'too polite', to the point where criticism goes unsaid because you don't want to offend. That's just as toxic of a culture, it just leads to a much slower demise than the flame-outs you get from more visceral bad behaviors.

...

>This isn't a gray area.

Argument from extremes.

Whenever the topic of "Well, what do they mean by professionalism?" you'll invariably get a response stating something really obvious, and pointing out people who violated those obvious norms.

Since I didn't, and don't expect to, violate them, this kind of comment is almost useless. Why? Because in no place where I've worked is the use of the word "professionalism" limited to those domains.

You will get people who do everything you said still be called unprofessional. Which is why the question becomes "Well, what does professional mean?" and invariably someone will give your response and we get nowhere.

I worked for a tutoring agency once. Our boss was trying to tell us that we should be careful not to make the student feel like a moron because they couldn't solve a problem we tutors found easy. What does that mean? He demonstrated it to us by saying "Well, when someone asks you an easy question, don't say 'Wow! You really can't do such a simple question?!'"

That demonstration was really helpful. We all went back and occasionally said to a student "Sure I can help you solve this trivial problem".

(No, of course we didn't. The point was to someone who wasn't aware, this approach would be totally appropriate for a tutor to do because he's not making explicit fun of the student).

People who leave with 2 week's notice have been called unprofessional.

People who don't reply to pointless emails have been called unprofessional.

Just open up an "Ask HN" thread and ask people what crazy things have been called "unprofessional" in their work place.

Sorry, but I have to agree with the others. Saying "Be professional" is as useless as "Be cool" or "Be good".

If a company doesn't have proper guidelines and training on what they expect their employees to do, then that company doesn't value professionalism. Not providing guidance and then pointing fingers is pretty low.

To what degree tech does, or should, value "professional"/polite behavior is a different topic.

The problem here is I think people have different definitions of "wildly unprofessional behavior".

They are skills you have to develop though and young people will make mistakes as they figure out what the boundaries are. If you are fortunate enough to have a mentor in the business, you have a huge advantage.

For better or worse at the forefront of your field and at the top of the social ladder the rules are different.

It's a sliding scale. The better one's results are the bigger douche one can be and get away with it. And that's a very good thing because it ensures that most people who know that they are not that fantastic at producing great results go out of their way to avoid being total douche bags.

Or be more "professional", but that's boring af.

I'm assuming you don't intend to defend mistreating coworkers, so you must think that there is unprofessional behavior that is nonetheless acceptable in the workplace.

Because I avoid meetings that exist solely to stroke manager egos. If it's not related to what I'm doing I don't go no matter how mandatory it is.

Because I avoid war rooms (getting people from every team into a room for days on end to troubleshoot some issue; but where it's not your problem and everyone just does normal work because it's not their problem either - again it's another management ego stroking thing).

Because I don't attend team building sessions especially if they involve sports or touching other people or being touched.

Because I refuse to travel. I generally don't travel for myself, so I don't travel for the company - spending days and weeks in a foreign place with nothing to do away from my family and in an unfamiliar bed teeming with potential nasties. No thanks. Had bed bugs once and it led to me losing everything and becoming homeless for a while. Never again.

Lots of people will think one or more of those are "unprofessional" and that your company owns you. I have bills to pay too but I want to live what little crappy life I have on my own terms and do my job - not the ancillary bullcrap.

This sounds like an extraordinary tragedy, and one that really ought to have been considered a workplace accident, in the same category as people who lose fingers to power tools. I'm sorry this happened to you.

> team building sessions especially if they involve sports or touching other people or being touched.

The dark side of team building sessions; they can be both disturbing and extremely exclusionary if they're lead by well-meaning but clueless people.

I had never put together quite how awful your average "team building seminar" could be for someone with autism or other physical-touch issues. I've never been in a position to call one, so I've always just left it at "those are annoying". But on reflection, "a room full of people openly pressuring you to let people touch you without warning" sounds like hell on earth for several people I know. And yet it's quite common to make them mandatory and expect everyone to act like they had fun...

What about if it's your more talented co-workers?

You really think it's acceptable or even laudable to harass coworkers?