It is a generalization, speaking from limited experience, and open to discussion. I'm sorry if you felt I was saying, "every fast learner is like this". Especially not you... because you're amazing 😀

I guess my argument is with the idea of correlation between fast learning and every other quality you and I listed. Between, "I want someone who learns fast!" and "I want someone who does their job properly!" I know which one I would pick.

If someone is doing their job well, why would it matter if it took them a few extra days to learn something?

Funnily enough I don't see it that way. And I feel that those people love their jobs.

They just have different motivations and values to you or me. They love feeling important, management admires them for always getting the job done "quickly", looking very busy, and communicating with everyone about how they just put out another late-night fire (leaving out they caused it).

I don't think it's healthy, for them or the business, but those people certainly seem to be everywhere and it's not for me to judge.

On the other hand I get my job satisfaction from the feeling of implementing a logical, robust solution, on clean data, and the aesthetics of beautifully formatted and easily maintainable code. I'm probably crazy but that's what I care about and what makes me smile.

But I don't think I "love" my job more than them. The job, to me, is secondary. I suspect the job is secondary to them too. We're all getting different stuff.

Here here. One of our developers came in sick for a week having lost their voice, and has now taken a month holiday with a brand new company laptop and sim card... to get some urgent work done. To me that's atrocious.