This is a specific example, and the general point is that there a multiple ways of doing things.
If a child can avoid 1 step and skip straight to the result more efficiently, that is a valid way of solving a problem.
Substraction is necessary for long division. Elementary schools force you to learn long division because later when you learn algebra, you need long division to divide polynomials, for example. You also will need substraction to do Gaussian elimination, etc...
Many school systems make difference between the ability to solve a problem, and the ability to solve a problem a certain way. Sometimes the first is all that's asked, but when that way of doing things is necessary later, then the second is asked of you.
The point is that you want to prepare the child for what they will need in the future. Sure, perhaps you are doubly exceptional and will be able to adapt on the fly in the future, but you can't design a school system around extremely uncommon students.
I say this as another 2E student that had very similar issues. There is no good way of fixing it except maybe by giving special accommodations to these students. I repeatedly failed exams exactly because I would skip steps this way, but there is no sense fundamentally changing the entire school system and hurting the majority for that.
Allowing someone to work the hours that they work most efficiently in increases productivity.
Everyone knows that meetings are a waste of time and lead to poorly thought out solutions.
Asynchronous communication is more efficient AND gives better results.
Both of these things are objectively good for the company, and a company which sees that will outperform a company that doesn’t.
Nobody wants to work 5 days a week. Most people just put up with it. The company doesn’t really have a way to measure productivity so they just say more hours worked = more hours produced. But we all know this relationship is not linear.
I know anecdotally that my productivity is vastly higher when working fewer hours.
I have had times where I get more work done in 4 days than I did in 5 days. That isn’t always going to be the case. But if the company is paying you 80% salary then the company is definitely getting more work out of you per unit salary, and that’s all that really matters in the end.
I do agree that modern work is quite broken and there's times we are more productive in shorter amounts of time. I don't think it's the "time" that determines it though but rather the nature of work and whether it motivates us and is in the perfect balance of flow etc. etc.
And good meetings are good meetings. That said, 2/3 meetings are considered "unnecessary" in surveys we did - so it's a matter of killing off the waste-of-time meetings and doing that async and using tech, and using the more synchronous ways of working for things that needs that (specific real-time collaborative work)
Having a gap is irrelevant if you can demonstrate skills.