Why taste matters

Nov 30, 2024

"Taste" is something I always thought was subjective - everyone has their own interpretation of what is considered "good taste". My views on this topic have started to change recently, and this is a collection of my thoughts on why I think taste matters?

For the rest of this post to make sense, let me try to define what taste means to me. Taste is basically one's ability to choose something that goes beyond basic rules and predictions. For example, let's say you pick a movie to watch tonight - how do you make the right pick? You pick a movie based on a few factors - which ones are available to watch now, who you are watching with, etc. This might help you arrive on a genre of movie, like horror, or a movie starring a certain actor. This choice is based on some concrete factors and is kind of predictable (Streaming services like Netflix have a "recommended for you" section, which effectively does the same thing). But this is not what I am talking about when it comes to taste. We all know someone who's movie recommendations are a step above this -you take their recommendations seriously, and are often happy with the suggestions. Such people, we say, have excellent taste in movies. That's what taste is.

I was always a believer that everyone has a different taste, there is no good and bad taste. But some recent experiences, both in my personal and professional life have caused me to reconsider this.

My professional example comes from programming - which is actually a great tool to understand taste. In programming, everyone needs to follow a set of rules - otherwise your program fails. But the way one person writes programs is often very different from another - everyone has their own taste. For a long time, I was primarily programming on my own - which often means only the final result matters, and no one cares about taste. However, as I started working more in bigger teams, I started to see a wide range of tastes. At the end, even in a big team, only the final result matters, which means good or bad taste is irrelevant. But often in teams, senior team members influence the taste of new team members - either directly by teaching, or indirectly by being the reference for future work (newer team members tend to follow the style used by existing members). As a result, a person's taste actually plays a huge role in the future of their team. Although engineers with good and bad taste perform similarly in the short term, the value of having good taste is seen a few years down the line - better taste means high quality (lesser chances of bugs), futureproofing and scalability, more resources to learn, and an overall better experience for anyone that interacts with said engineer. This is one example, but I'm sure we all see different version of good taste in our workplace at all levels - from the CEO whose communication is clear and concise, to the janitor who always leaves the floor looking perfectly clean.

Taste also plays a big role in our personal life - one such example is the food choices we make. I have seen some people who are very particular about what they eat - they only eat food that they know to be healthy. Often, it is hard to eat healthy - you need to prepare well in advance, resist the temptations of junk food, and also spend more money. As a result, a lot of us don't have good "taste" (pun intended) when it comes to food. Some of us (myself included) are too flexible - we just eat what's quick and easy. Others care about the cuisine, restaurant chain, or literally the taste. Although in the short term, these choices don't matter much (especially when you are young), but I have seen a lot of older people regret the fact that they did not eat healthy when they were younger. There are so many other aspects of our lives where good taste matters - the kind of friends we make, how we spend our money, and so on.

I hope by this point I have convinced you that there is good taste and bad taste, and that it is important to refine your taste. But often, I see that taste is overlooked because there are few challenges in talking about taste.

Taste is personal

This is what all of us are told growing up. It is considered rude to tell someone that they have bad taste. This is especially true in personal settings - I have often seen that junior employees take criticism about their knowledge in a positive way. However, comments about taste (like how you write emails, the way you dress, and so on) are not well received - it is often seen as micromanagement or a personal attack. A similar effect happens when parents comment on their children's habits.

Talking about taste is seen as elitist

When a team is busy with deadlines, nobody wants to talk about the font size on your presentation. When you have loans to repay, you don't want to think about how to invest your savings. All this seems like acceptable excuses to not talk about taste, but the truth is that most teams are always busy, and money problems always exist. So taste will always seem like a lower priority.

The results of taste are usually long-term - so people don't give credit to better taste

Often, when you have good taste, no one can see the results immediately. Let's say you change the way quality control is done in your team - it will often take a few years for the result of this system to be seen. In this time, a lot of other things may also have changed - maybe new team members were hired, or the workload on the team had reduced. People usually associate such quantifiable factors with the improvement.

It is hard to develop, demonstrate and defend your taste

Even if you practice good taste, and want to share that with someone - you often end up asking yourself "do I really think this is good". The reason for this self-doubt is that unlike other skills, taste is hard to quantify. Maybe you feel like reducing the number of meetings in your team will help everyone. How do you quantify that and convince everyone that it is good taste? How can you tell your friends from school that you don't want to hang out with them anymore because their tastes are affecting your life? The only people I know who very confidently talk about their taste are very successful people - a CEO like Steve Jobs talks about how Apple's culture of simple user interfaces is good taste, but someone starting their career would hesitate to do that.

So what's the conclusion? I think people always find flaws in arguments about taste - they are not easy to defend like number and facts. In a lot of cases, taste may not matter. You could promote good taste in your team, and still underperform due to some other factors. You could eat very healthy and still die young. I don't know if this would resonate with everyone, but my takeaways are: