What do you count as a 'professional' job?

[Llamapalma]

My DSis and I have been arguing this tonight.

What in your opinion counts as a 'professional' job?

Certain wage? Anyone who works in an office? Anyone who has to dress smart? Certain job titles?

Might as well open a GP practice.

In the Civil Service, we talk about competency levels, being competent to an objectively measurable standard.

It isn't just about paying for a registration, that's the end result of being professional. It's the degree of competence, the skills and aptitude to carry out the activities, for which you need to evidence experience on the job and professional qualifications. From there you can apply for registration but it's all the hard work and time on the job that's important.

The difference between an amateur and a professional is that the former is prone to doing a botched job of it, whereas if you pay a professional who knows what they're doing, you get good results. Ask a professional to do a job and when you balk at them charging, say £200 for 1 hr's work to fix your boiler they'll tell you "you're not paying me for the 1 hr today, you're paying me for the 20 years of knowledge it's taken me to quickly diagnose the problem and give you the right solution "

The danger of being too narrow and prescriptive in the definition is that it can exclude professions where skill technique knowledge and experience really count but they aren't sitting in a corporate office drinking coffee and working on a computer. And I'm saying that as someone who does have a corporate role, which my employer describes as a profession, but I recognise the knowledge and skills of many and various people in our society.

It's ironic that most office jobs, as you describe them, don't require any level of specialised competency besides a working knowledge of IT. To me, it's specialisation that makes a professional, since most jobs are office-based.

For the record, I work in an office, and I am not particularly skilled. Because I lack a high level of skill, I am a low paid office worker. My colleagues who have taken additional qualifications have higher pay.

Isn't is just a numbers game though? Lots of people can do basic office work, so it doesn't need to be highly paid to get workers to do it. Whereas a specialist skill requires knowledge/experience, so there's a smaller pool of people able to do it, hence wages need to be higher to get workers to do it.

A profession is any role that requires registration with a professional body and adherence with a code of conduct, I thought?

Nothing to do with how much you earn or whether you're in an office of not.

Quite.
I don't understand the "office" bit. Going by that surgeons, dentists, teachers, pharmacists wouldn't be professions as they're not predominantly office based. But they all require a high level of training, pass professional exams, and compulsory registration with a professional body in order to practice

DH is not office-based, is a tradesman, but his IT skills are at least equal to mine (admin work done from iPad). Hires a few employees. Earns way more than me because he is in a specialist field