When I was a naive starting grad student, I thought the goal was to publish as many papers as possible. Wrong for many reasons, but one: if people see a *bad* paper you wrote, they will remember it. And they'll be prejudiced against your future work. Write papers you're proud of.

Let me refine a bit: *try to* write papers you're proud of. I sometimes fail at this, but it's the goal ( https://twitter.com/thegautamkamath/status/1262749132332036100). Also, as Jon Ullman pointed out to me, there's a difference between a weak paper and a bad paper.

To elaborate, a weak paper is one which is technically sound and honest, just might not have the biggest contribution. These are OK, especially for starting researchers, as long as you don't get a reputation for it (or maybe you do, and you're fine with that).

A bad paper is one which is wrong, dishonest, or trivial (non-exhaustive). All we have as academics is our reputation and credibility. And credibility is hard to earn again once lost.