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Hiring panels want you to be excellent and work for them, so your approach to those can be completely different. It's not a necessary politeness to be modest at interview. If they ask a question like this then their fear is that you've produced 10-13 mediocre papers per year but nothing great, in which case they wouldn't want to hire you. They want you to allay this fear. You need to justify to them the value of your work, so that they're confident that you've produced the 1-3 solid papers they expect, and more. You need to justify it in more detail than "well, a top tier journal accepted it", or "I have a high citation count", which means talking qualitatively about your impact on your field and on the work of others. You also may need to convince them that you somewhat understand your own process and success, because they're running a department of interacting individuals, not a paper-factory. If they're going to hire you for faculty-track then they want to know that you'll benefit the department, as well as generating research. They won't turn you down for producing too much high-quality work, but they might turn you down if they think the good work you're doing would be more than cancelled out by the negative effect on department morale of you going around telling everyone the secret to success is to put the effort in.

Hiring panels want you to be excellent and work for them, so your approach to those can be completely different. It's not a necessary politeness to be modest at interview. If they ask a question like this then their fear is that you've produced 10-13 mediocre papers per year but nothing great, in which case they wouldn't want to hire you. They want you to allay this fear. You need to justify to them the value of your work, so that they're confident that you've produced the 1-3 solid papers they expect, and more. You need to justify it in more detail than "well, a top tier journal accepted it", or "I have a high citation count", which means talking qualitatively about your impact on your field and on the work of others. You also may need to convince them that you somewhat understand your own process and success, because they're running a department of interacting individuals, not a paper-factory. If they're going to hire you for tenure-track then they want to know that you'll benefit the department, as well as generating research. They won't turn you down for producing too much high-quality work, but they might turn you down if they think the good work you're doing would be more than cancelled out by the negative effect on department morale of you going around telling everyone the secret to success is to put the effort in.

You may have felt that saying "I work hard" is a modest answer to the question, but it really isn't. Almost anyone can "work hard", it's perceived almost as a moral choice. Perhaps it shouldn't be, but hard work is a virtue and you're saying you possess much more of it than they do. The janitor works hard, it doesn't seem to have done his publication record any good.

You may have felt that saying "I work hard" is a modest answer to the question, but it really isn't. Almost anyone can "work hard", it's perceived almost as a moral choice. Perhaps it shouldn't be, but hard work is a virtue and you're saying you possess much more of it than they do. The janitor works hard, and it doesn't seem to have done his publication record any good, so your answer lacks insight. Which is not unexpected in a three-word answer ;-)

Imagine if someone asked Terence Tao "how come you've published so much, achieved so highly, and won the Fields medal?", and he said "the only reason is that I work harder than you do". No, it's not only because of that, it's also (indeed mainly) because he's way better than me at what he does. That was true before he put in the hours and the effort. There are people who've put in just as much hard work as he has and achieved less (albeit, I'm not one of them). So for him to claim that the only difference between himself and me is that I work less hard would be an insult. I can accept that he works harder, but I cannot accept that the only reason I'm not a Fields medallist is lack of effort on my part, and it's rude to tell me that it is. If he's going to pick one reason ten I would far rather he picked "because I find mathematics much, much easier than you do".

Hiring panels want you to be excellent and work for them, so your approach to those can be completely different. It's not a necessary politeness to be modest at interview. If they ask a question like this then their fear is that you've produced 10-13 mediocre papers per year but nothing great, in which case they wouldn't want to hire you. They want you to allay this fear. You need to justify to them the value of your work, so that they're confident that you've produced the 1-3 solid papers they expect, and more. You need to justify it in more detail than "well, a top tier journal accepted it", or "I have a high citation count", which means talking qualitatively about your impact on your field and on the work of others. You also may need to convince them that you somewhat understand your own process and success, because they're running a department of interacting individuals, not a paper-factory. If they're going to hire you for faculty-track then they want to know that you'll benefit the department, as well as generating research. They won't turn you down for producing too much high-quality work, but they might turn you down if they think the good work you're doing would be more than cancelled out by the negative affect on department morale of you going around telling everyone the secret to success is to put the effort in.

Imagine if someone asked Terence Tao "how come you've published so much, achieved so highly, and won the Fields medal?", and he said "the only reason is that I work harder than you do". No, it's not only because of that, it's also (indeed as a prerequisite) because he's way better than me at what he does. That was true before he put in the hours and the effort. There are people who've put in just as much hard work as he has and achieved less (albeit, I'm not one of them). So for him to claim that the only difference between himself and me is that I work less hard would be an insult. I can accept that he works harder, but I cannot accept that the only reason I'm not a Fields medallist is lack of effort on my part, and it's rude to tell me that it is. If he's going to pick one reason then I would far rather he picked "because I find mathematics much, much easier than you do". But, for what it's worth, here's what Terence Tao actually says instead of saying "I work hard".

Hiring panels want you to be excellent and work for them, so your approach to those can be completely different. It's not a necessary politeness to be modest at interview. If they ask a question like this then their fear is that you've produced 10-13 mediocre papers per year but nothing great, in which case they wouldn't want to hire you. They want you to allay this fear. You need to justify to them the value of your work, so that they're confident that you've produced the 1-3 solid papers they expect, and more. You need to justify it in more detail than "well, a top tier journal accepted it", or "I have a high citation count", which means talking qualitatively about your impact on your field and on the work of others. You also may need to convince them that you somewhat understand your own process and success, because they're running a department of interacting individuals, not a paper-factory. If they're going to hire you for faculty-track then they want to know that you'll benefit the department, as well as generating research. They won't turn you down for producing too much high-quality work, but they might turn you down if they think the good work you're doing would be more than cancelled out by the negative effect on department morale of you going around telling everyone the secret to success is to put the effort in.