u/Accurate-Point9474

So I had a recruiter screen last week, it was standard they just called my cell and we talked about my background for half an hour. I feel like I did better than usual and was pretty confident in how it went. I had InterviewMan going the whole call and the bullets off the audio were lining up which helped but hey it was only the recruiter I mean it's the easy one. What was strange was that it didn't even take a day to hear back. Is there a reason they move that fast? Like is one person enough to decide?

I think one of the strangest things about corporate life is that being easy to reach quickly starts becoming more important than doing the work itself well. After a while, your day stops being about solving problems and turns into proving that you're present. Reply quickly. Join calls quickly. Answer to pings quickly. Post small updates quickly. Even if none of those things are what you were hired to do. The strange thing is that people eventually start praising visibility more than results without realizing they're doing it.
I feel like a lot of companies have unintentionally created work environments where everyone's attention gets chopped up into little pieces all day, and then everyone wonders why no one can focus anymore. I noticed this more when I got into heavier cross-functional work. Entire days disappear into check-ins, planning chats, status threads, recap docs, and follow-ups on the follow-ups before them. By the time you log off after 11 hours, you've been busy the whole time, but the main project has somehow moved only a tiny bit.
The person who's always green on Teams looks productive. The person replying to emails at 8:30 PM looks dedicated. The person who speaks in every meeting looks involved. Meanwhile, some of the most valuable people I've worked with were quiet for hours at a time because they were working on the hard part.
And honestly, I think a big part of burnout now doesn't come from the hard work itself as much as it comes from the fact that you never even get 90 quiet minutes where your brain is completely away from work.