Harry East
Jul 30, 2017 · 1 min read

I’m… not sure… in some parts of the world an absence of self-deprecation is going to make people think you’re a wanker.¹ And, similarly, an absence of understatement² can be mistaken for arrogance… even if it is just honesty. So, I think, you might find yourself being more honest about your knowledge of, say, Blockchain whilst still preserving similar remarks at the start of presentations.

Of course, subcultures do things a bit differently so if the industry is, as it were, normatively arrogant (and I have no experience with it so I don’t know) it probably doesn’t even matter if the wider culture is more keen on, e.g., self-deprecation.

¹ On the other hand there were these magazine editors who used to insert insufficiently sincere? self-deprecating remarks everywhere which was really annoying. Insincere might not be quite right, it was more rote… like “we’re expected to be self-deprecating so here is some self-deprecation”.

² I am reminded of a joke in which the set up involves a British pilot and a jumbo jet with at least one of the engines on fire. The punchline is something like, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m terribly sorry but we’re having a slight problem with an engine.”