[eesmith]

My complaint is that the author appears to be using the term "amateur" as a slur.

There are professionals - people who get paid to work on projects for a living - who shirk the less-fun parts. The author seems to want to call those people "amateurs".

There are amateurs - people who are not paid to work on projects - who are very serious about their work and do the less-fun parts. Should we call these people "professionals?"

We need only look at volunteer organizations to see non-professionals doing hard and often thankless work. We see people work hard to excel in amateur sports all the time, even if only to make a personal record. It therefore doesn't seem right to associate "amateur" with the qualities that the author is trying to describe.

I pointed out the USGA example precisely because the author seems to think that those terms and definitions can be applied to golf. Since they can't, they likely can't be applied to other fields either.

Wouldn't "lazy worker" and "good worker" be more appropriate terms than "amateur" and "professional"?