I’m wondering if it’s necessarily second-handed if it’s your boss whose watching. It’s definitely second-handed if what you want is to impress the other person for the sake of it. When the end goal is making other people have a higher opinion of you, then it’s second-handed. When the boss is watching, the goal is presumably to keep your job, get a raise or get a promotion, i.e., rational self-interested goals.
When you have a higher goal is it necessarily second-handed to try to achieve it by impressing someone? Is it second-handed to try extra hard to impress in a job interview, for example? I guess Roark wouldn’t do it? He just always does his work naturally and wants to be judged based on that? I think Roark would just work naturally.
The idea might be that you can’t gain values by second-hand means.
Is it lying to try extra hard when your boss is watching? Maybe the boss assumes everyone tries extra hard when he’s watching, so not trying extra hard would unfairly disadvantage you. And it’s understood that you will try extra hard so no deception is really going on. But isn’t that everyone just playing a fake game which you shouldn’t take part of? It doesn’t make it any better if everyone goes around in a circle fooling each other.