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    Thanks. In my areas, more papers is usually better. Anyway, I can certainly ignore my colleagues in a polite way. But I was more worried about someone judgmental in the future search committees during my job-search. Anyway, perhaps there is nothing one can do about such things in one way or another. Commented Jun 22, 2015 at 20:49
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    Exactly: such questions are not requests for information, but are passive-aggressive complaints. Commented Jun 22, 2015 at 21:24
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    FWIW, I can see myself asking a peer who outputs much more than I do (at a quality level I respect) for what they do differently. Learn from the best, or so they say. "I don't have a life", "I manage to remove distractions from my work hours", "I give ideas and sketches to students and have them work out the details" and "I don't know, it just works that way for me" can all be valid answers. That is to say, if I were to ask such a peer and were brushed off, then I'd be offended (because of the assumption). Feel the situation before choosing your reaction. (cc @paulgarrett) Commented Jun 23, 2015 at 7:14
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    "One common attitude in mathematics is that publishing a lot of papers is a waste of your potential". Out of curiosity, was the same thought of Erdős? Or did he get a free pass in the community because he was already a recognized genius by the time he became a prolific publisher? Commented Jun 23, 2015 at 16:36
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    My impression is that Erdős largely got a pass because he was brilliant and eccentric. His reputation is a little tricky to assess historically, since his style of discrete mathematics based on elementary techniques has become increasingly popular. Nowadays everyone acknowledges that he was an important mathematician, but decades ago there was some grumbling that his personal story led to his getting more attention than his mathematical contributions deserved. I think it was mainly prejudice based on his field, but publishing so many papers probably didn't help. Commented Jun 23, 2015 at 17:08