I’ve been thinking a bit about reputation lately. This was spurned by a few events/incidents in my life:
- A startup founder I am consulting with threw a temper tantrum due to inconsistent results due to a combination of UI complications and machine learning algorithms. They claimed that “…We need to fix this in the next 24 hrs because our reputation is on the line here. If you aren’t able to fix it then I’ll need to make alternate arrangements asap”
- My GopherConAU co-organizer stressing out over the website design of Go Go Go Gogo, and stressing over pixel perfection of the sponsorship prospectus because she wants “the [prospective sponsors and attendees] to think we are professionals - our reputation is all we have”
- A work meeting with an external client about something got somewhat derailed for about 10 minutes because the one person from the other party recognized me as the author of Gorgonia and we (me and said other person) proceeded to talk about super-deep technical details of why their company ended up writing their own library. The meeting was about something else entirely and our conversations alienated the remaining six people on the call. That was awkward. After that my boss’ comments were along the lines of “your reputation precedes you but it’s the team’s reputation that needs to be considered”.
- My wife is applying for new jobs and bombed an interview, and she was worried about sullying her otherwise pretty-good reputation.
In each of the events above, I have said something along the lines of “reputation doesn’t matter” or “you/we/I don’t have a reputation”. A Taylor Swift reference may have been thrown in as well.
I think my wife’s retort is the best - “saying reputation doesn’t matter comes from a place of privilege - it’s because you already have a lot of reputation that you can afford to lose some”.
My thoughts on reputation is not complicated, but I haven’t quite the words to explain it. So in each of the events above, I have said things that made me sound boorish, unkind or uncaring. Viewed from another angle, what I said could even be construed as unprofessional.
One way of explaining what I meant would be this: worrying about reputation when there are things that are much more important is not necessarily the best use of time. But this explanation would have to evaluate the values system of everyone involved.
Perhaps this Zen koan would illustrate my thoughts on the matter more (this is my own retelling from memory):
One day a geisha comissioned a painting, and Gessen asked “how much can you pay?”
To which the geisha replied “whatever you charge, but the work must be done in front of me”
So Gessen went with the geisha, and painted the painting in front of the geisha and her patron. She paid him. Then she told her patron “all this artist wants is money. He doesn’t have the pure mind of a monk. There is no zen in his work. His work is not fit for exhibition. It’s only fit to be used as my undergarment”
This was an affront to Gessen’s reputation as a Zen monk - one of the things Zen is all about is that there is Zen even in walking, where Zen is an ineffable concept akin to “contemplation” or “thought” or “care”. Nonetheless he continued to paint for a lot of money. It was only much later that the reason for all these things Gessen did was learned.
Gessen had three wishes:
- Feed the people in his village in times of famine. He had set up a secret granary to aid in that effort.
- Build a good road from his village to the city.
- Build a temple in his teacher’s name
By Zen standards, these are Good Things to do. After he managed to do these three things, he threw away his brush and never painted again.
My thoughts on reputation are something along those lines: something needs to be done that is more important than caring about reputation. Better to do those and pay more attention to those than worry about reputation.