I agree. There are three issues here, all somewhat related. First, there's flattery. An investor or boss who puffs you up with "you're so smart" is often tryin

I agree. There are three issues here, all somewhat related. First, there's flattery. An investor or boss who puffs you up with "you're so smart" is often trying to create a context where you feel embarrassed by anything but a 120% effort. It works like a charm on the clueless, talented young people that VCs love. Second, there's validation as a show of power. When someone says of you, "this guy is smart", what he might be saying is, "I have the power to validate or invalidate a person around here, and you're my guy-- if you keep in line." Third, it can be a way of damning with faint praise. "He's smart" often means, "he has so much potential", which always comes with an implicit "but". It's much more effective to sabotage someone's reputation with continuing faint praise than to come out with an obvious attack, which just makes you (if you're the attacker) look like a bitter asshole. If you really want to ruin someone's reputation, you always make it look like you're defending that person (against negative social proof that comes "from the ether" because you just made it up). It's like spreading a rumor by denying something. "He clearly has issues with women but I doubt he's a rapist." Then again, most of the time people are just saying what they think at face value and there aren't any hidden motivations. I wouldn't read too much into being called "smart". Often it means just that. Still, it is a hard campaign to get out of the Smart Kid mentality (with all the risk-averse mediocrity and approval-seeking that entails) and get more toward a Maker mentality. It's taken me 30 years, and I still have to summon the courage to, e.g., put something in open source. Ultimately, though, every ex-"wunderkind" must learn that a Smart Kid is still just a kid. It's not something to make a career out of.