>Which is why it's so utterly toxic that corporate America runs on an interrupt driven system, with meetings sprinkled carelessly across engineer calendars.

As a person who’s worked in both american and european big companies... I can tell it’s not an american illness only and I have heard the same from asian friends. Best I got was one or two meeting-free days (at least on paper, in reality these would be ignored as well). I just got used to these things.