When are more publications less?
At Aaron's suggestion, here is my second comment from the complexity blog, warts and all.  Italics are (linked) quotes from earlier comments.


  I've seen candidates publishing more than 15 papers a year and then a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are good or not.
  
  ...because more often than not, the answer is no. Most of the
  uncharacteristically long CVs I've seen in hiring committee meetings
  are chock full of crap. Or they're good in the aggregate, but appear
  to advance their research in too many incremental steps. Even if there
  are diamonds in the slurry, I have to ask—why did they publish all
  that other stuff? Why didn't they make one big splash instead of this
  long, meager dribble? Did they not notice that most of their papers
  were weak? Are they publishing so many papers to advance the state of
  the art, or only to make their CV longer? Are they going to value
  quantity over quality in their own PhD students? Or am I in fact
  witnessing a miracle candidate?
  
  Despite what Dr. Anonymous two steps above me suggests, these are not irrelevant
  issues. I don't want my department associated with someone known to
  publish reams of crap, or who wastes my colleagues' time reviewing
  tons of incremental papers, or who thinks they're Thor's gift to
  computer science when they're not, or who tries to convince PhD
  students that their CVs need to look like the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
  Those aren't the people I want to work with; that's not the culture I
  want to work in; that's not (in my opinion) what's best for the
  Advancement of Knowledge™.
  
  And notice I said “suspicious”, not “deadly”. Of course we read
  recommendation letters and search citation indices and even (gasp)
  read the actual papers. Sometimes that's enough to allay my
  suspicions; yes, there are miracle candidates. But just often enough
  for me to keep my suspicions, they're proven right.
  
  So where exactly does the long CV comes in as a negative, rather than
  the fact that the person does not have significant contributions?
  
  The problem isn't just that they may not have significant
  contributions, but also that they may have too many not-significant
  contributions. (See my
  earlier comment about "max" vs "sum".)
  
  Sounds like you guys are rationalizing a case of paper envy, rather
  than following sound academic decisions.
  
  What the hell is “paper envy”? Result envy or impact envy or
  reputation envy I could get behind, but paper envy? Really? Since when
  are papers something to be envious about?
  
  Also: Not publicly taking credit for your opinions? Deeply suspicious.