..and a few comments around the cartoon which struck chords with me:
I'd love to draw parallels with the old Guild levels of Apprentice, Journeyman and Master, but I feel I'm still Journeying.
Think about the age of mastery. There's something about it which appeals to me - that's why I've always had aspirations to be an assasin. It's hard to be a bad assasin, you end up incredibly dead incredibly quickly. Granted it's an extreme example, but the concept is that excellence is encouraged (your interpretation of encouragement might be different to mine, but roll with it, the analogy works).
Yeah, I know the feeling all too well. Which is why I try to avoid consulting gigs like the plague.
The thing about consulting I hate is, you just get paid by the billable hour. So the minute you stop tapdancing, you're dead.
A Journeyman gets paid while he works. A Master gets paid while he sleeps.
Ok, the assasin metaphor falls down here, but still I love the point Hugh makes. As a consultant you're constantly justifying what you're doing, how long you took doing it, and why you did it. Compare that to a "master" of a trade. The modern day examples that come to mind are things like people who build classic cars, high end tattoo artists, anyone like that who's in heavy demand. You don't go to those people and ask "How much will it cost?" - you go to them and hope that somehow they can fit your requests into their timetable, and then wait until the bill comes in.
Oh, I also liked the probably unintentional ommision regarding the payment of Apprentices.