It's not that professionalism is bad, it's that nobody knows what that even means anymore. People now use it mostly to attack other people by saying that are "not professional".

True enough. When I titled this thread, I was being a little tongue-in-cheek. I don't really think that professionalism is bad.

I don't always agree that you need to make the client comfortable. They often have big problems which can be socially painful to fix, especially when they don't have the experience to know how to do it themselves (i.e. no dev machine, no sane testing process, and so on). They can feel threatened by someone who does know what they are doing, and they transfer that hostility to you. They fear change. It's just the way that some clients are.

Hmmm...an interesting point. I think there's two levels of comfort involved. You can make the client uncomfortable on the "tactical" level--i.e., an issue that is socially painful to fix, as you put it--but on the "strategic" level they must always retain a respect for you and your competence. That strategic level is the comfort-zone that really matters, in the long run. (I think.)

When you think something needs to change, you need to find out why it's that way in the first place.

Actually, K told me (what he thinks is) the source of the problem: A, their chief technical guy, has had some bad history working at overly-formal ISO-9000-ish places and my formality was giving him flashbacks to that. That sounds a little simplistic to me...I suspect there were other factors as well. A and I have very different personality types; I very much doubt that we would ever be personally close. That said, I respect his technical skills--and I think he respects mine--enough that we will be able to work together just fine.

Once you have a better idea of the history, suggest small and easy changes, wait, and repeat. Your job is not to fix every problem right away. Feel satisfied if you can keep them moving in the right direction, even if it's not as fast as you would like.

Good advice. Thank you.

You can't always give in to just get along either: you've probably been hired to fix things (not necessarily "shake things up" though). If you give in, you aren't doing what you were hired to do, and you have to figure out if you just want to do the job and get the paycheck or solve the problem.

Heh. Not an issue. Sycophancy is not something I can do. :>