Sunil Pai on Reputation: 'Collecting Favours', Lessons From His Doctor Father
threepointone · x · 2026-10-08
Developer Sunil Pai (threepointone) published a long-form essay, "Collecting Favours", on the idea of reputation — told through his father, a family doctor in the small town of Manipal, India.
His father said yes to everyone: a 3 a.m. chest-pain call meant getting up, driving out, and solving the problem first — hospital, right doctor, admission — never starting with cost or blame. Pai's running joke of "collecting favours, I like having people owe me" exists to make people comfortable and release them from the burden of indebtedness.
The core insight: reputation isn't a curated image but the accumulation of consistently solving problems first and sorting out the rest later. Pai says he failed to write this abstractly several times before grounding it in his father's story.
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